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CONTEMPORARY    SOCIALISM 


Contemporary  Socialism 


BY 

JOHN    RAE,    M.A. 


SECOND  EDITION,  REVISED  AND  ENLARGED 


CHARLES     SCRIBNER'S     SONS 
1 891 


stack 
Annex 

ffX 

(^91 


PEEFACE. 


In  the  present  edition  the  original  work  has  not  only  been 
carefully  revised,  but  very  considerably  enlarged.  The 
chapters  on  "  The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism. " 
and  "Russian  NihiHsm"  contain  a  few  sentences  retained 
from  the  first  edition,  but  otherwise  they  are  entirely  new — 
the  former  necessarily  so  on  account  of  the  nature  of  its 
subject,  and  the  latter  on  account  of  the  importance  of  the 
fresh  materials  that  have  been  recently  given  to  the  world. 
A  new  chapter  has  been  added  on  "  Anarchism,"  and  another, 
of  considerable  extent,  on  "  State  Socialism."  No  apology  is 
required  for  the  length  of  the  latter,  for  though  State  socialism 
is  onlj''  a  growth  of  yesterday,  it  has  already  spread  every- 
where, and  if  it  is  not  superseding  socialism  proper,  it  is  cer- 
tainly eclipsing  it  in  practical  importance,  and  to  some  extent 
even  modifying  it  in  character.  Revolutionary  socialism,  grow- 
ing more  opportunist  of  late  years,  seems  losing  much  of  its  old 
phrenzy,  and  getting  domesticated  into  a  shifty  State  socialism, 
fighting  a  parUamentary  battle  for  minor,  though  still  probably 
mischievous,  changes  within  the  lines  of  existing  society, 
instead  of  the  old  war  a  Voutrance  against  existing  society  in 
whatever  shape  or  form.  Anyhow  the  socialistic  controversy 
in  the  immediate  future  will  evidently  be  fought  along  the 


vi  Preface. 

lines  of  State  socialism.  It  is  there  the  hostile  parties  meet, 
and  it  is  well  therefore  to  get,  if  we  can,  some  more  exact 
knowledge  of  the  ground.  Some  of  the  other  chapters  in  the 
work  have  been  altered  here  and  there  for  the  purpose  of  bring- 
ing their  matter,  where  necessary,  down  to  date,  or  embodying 
fresh  illustrative  evidence,  or  occasionally  of  making  the  ex- 
position itself  more  lucid  and  effective ;  but  it  is  unnecessary 
to  specify  these  alterations  in  detail. 

April,  1891. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INtRODUCTORY. 

Revival  of  Socialism,  1 — Extinction  of  Old  Types,  2 — Main  Surviving 
Type,  Social  Democracy,  3 — Its  Two  Varieties,  Socialist  and  Anarchist, 
4 — Its  Relations  to  Political  Democracy,  4 — Definition  of  Socialism, 
5 — Cairnes  on  Mill's  Profession  of  Socialism,  6 — Ruling  Characteristic 
common  to  Old  and  New  Socialism,  9 — State  Socialism,  11 — Conserva- 
tive Socialism,  13— The  Minimum  of  Socialism,  14 — First  Rise  of 
Social  Democrac3'^,  15 — Rousseau,  16 — Baboeuf,  17 — Connection  of 
Socialism  with  Democracy,  18 — The  Danger  to  Free  Institutions, 
24 — ^Necessity  and  Probability  of  Wider  Difiusion  of  Propertj*,  25. 

CHAPTER  U. 

THE  PROGRESS  AND  PRESENT  POSITION  OF   SOCIALISM. 

National  Conditions  Favourable  to  Socialism,  30 — Germany,  30 — Progress 
of  Socialist  Vote,  33 — Action  of  Socialist  Party  in  Reichstag,  34 — Party 
Programme,  38 — Halle  Congress  of  1891,  40 — France,  45 — Anarchists, 
47 — Socialist  Revolutionary  Party,  48 — Possibilists,  50 — Blanquists, 
53 — The  Socialist  Group  in  the  Chamber,  53 — Austria,  54 — Italy,  57 — 
Spain,  60 — Portugal,  65 — Norway  and  Sweden,  66 — Denmark,  67 — 
Belgium,  70 — Holland,  72 — Switzerland,  73 — United  States,  77 — Bos- 
ton Anarchists,  77 — Mr.  Henry  George,  78 — Mr.  Bellamy's  Nationalism, 
79 — Anarchists,  80 — Socialistic  Labour  Party,  81 — Knights  of  Labor, 
82 — England,  83 — Social  Democrats,  84 — Anarchists,  86 — Christian 
Socialists,  87 — Fabians,  88 — Land  Nationalization,  89 — Scotland,  90 — 
Australia,  90. 

CHAPTER  in. 

FERDINAND   LASSALLE. 

German  Socialists  before  Lassalle,  93 — Favourable  Conditions  for  Socialist 
Agitation  in  Germany,  94 — Character  of  LassaUe,  96 — The  Hatzfeldt 


v^iii  Contents. 

Case,  99— Theft  of  the  Cassette,  100— Trial  for  Sedition,  101— Literary 
Activity,  102 — Letter  to  Leipzig  Working  Men,  103 — Foundation  of 
General  Working  Men's  Association,  105 — Lassalle's  Agitation,  105 — 
His  Death,  106— Funeral,  108— Political  Views,  109— Idea  and  Posi- 
tion of  the  Working  Class,  109 — Functions  of  the  State,  ill — Econo- 
mic Doctrines,  113 — Anarchic  Socialism  of  the  present  Industrial 
Eegivie,  117 — Kicardo's  "  Iron  Law  "  of  Wages,  119 — A  National,  not 
an  International  Socialist,  124 — Internationality  not  Peculiar  to 
Socialist  Parties,  126 — Reason  of  Socialist  Condemnation  of  Patriot- 
ism, 127. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

EARL  MARX. 

Reception  of  his  Work  on  Capital,  128— The  Young  Hegelians,  130 — 
Feuerbach's  Humanism,  131 — "  Young  Germany,"  136 — Weitling  and 
Albrecht,  137 — Early  Socialistic  Leanings  of  Marx,  139 — Marx  in 
Paris,  141 — in  Brussels,  142 — The  Communist  League,  142 — Com- 
munist Manifesto  of  1847,  144 — New  Rhenish  Gazette,  146 — Marx 
in  London,  147 — The  International,  its  Rise  and  Fall,  149 — Tendency 
to  Division  in  Revolutionary  Parties,  152 — "Das  Capital,"  155 — 
Historical  Rise  of  Capitalism,  156— Origin  of  Surplus  Value,  157 — 
Theory  of  Value,  160— Price,  163— Criticism  of  his  Theory  of  Value, 
165 — Wages,  166 — Normal  Day  of  Labour,  168— Machinery,  170— 
Piecework,  172— Relative  Over-population,  174. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  FEDERALISM  OF  CARL  MARLO. 

Rodbertus,  179— Professor  Winkelblech  (Mario),  180— His  Awakening  to 
Social  Misery,  180— Application  to  Economic  Study  for  Solution,  181 
—View  of  Social  Problem,  182— Heathen  Idea  of  Right  (Monopolism) 
to  be  replaced  by  Christian  Idea  of  Right  (Panpolism),  183— Liberal- 
ism and  Communism  both  Utopias,  184 — Federalism  alone  realizes 
Christian  Idea  of  Right,  188— Natural  Right  of  all  to  Property,  189— 
Right  to  Labour  and  to  Fruits  of  Labour,  191— Necessity  of  Con- 
trolling Increase  of  Population,  192— Of  Suppressing  Unproductive 
Acquisition,  193 — Collectivization  of  Land  and  Productive  Capital 
193. 

CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   SOCIALISTS  OF  THE  CHAIR. 

Tlie  Name,  195— Held's  Vindication  of  it,  19G— Objections  to  it,  197— 
Founders  of  the  Historical  School,  200— Their  Departure  from  Man- 


Contents.  ix 

Chester  Party,  202 — Eisenach  Congress,  202— The  Historical  Method, 
204 — The  Historical  School  a  Realist  School,  205 — An  Ethical  School, 
209— Their  Theory  of  the  State,  211— The  Social  Question,  212— Vou 
Scheel,  215— Brentano,  215. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   CHRISTIAN   SOCIALISTS. 

Socialism  and  Christianitj',  218 — Views  of  St.  Simon  and  Cahet,  218 — 
Irreligious  Character  of  Contemporarj'  Socialism,  219 — The  Christian 
Socialists  of  England  in  1850,  220— Those  of  Germany  now,  223 — The 
Catholic  Group,  223 — Ketteler,  224 — Moufang,  230 — Protestant  Group, 
233-Stocker,  Todt,  234— Christian  Social  Working  Men's  Party,  239 
— The  Social  Monarchical  Union,  241 — The  Evangelical  Social  Con- 
gress of  1890,  241 -Is  there  a  Specific  Christian  Social  Politics?  242— 
Christian  Socialism  in  Austria,  242 — In  France,  243 — International 
Catholic  Social  Congress  of  1890  at  Liege,  243 — The  Pope's  Encyclical, 
245. 

CHAPTER  Vm. 

ANARCHISM. 

Recent  Activity  of  Anarchists,  247 — Individualist  Anarchists  and  Com- 
munist Anarchists,  248 — Latter  are  Ultra-Socialist,  249 — Ultra-Demo- 
cratic, 250 — Proudhon's  Anarchic  Government,  250 — Xo  Representa- 
tive Institutions,  251 — Prince  Krapotkin's  Plan  for  Housing  the  Poor, 
252 — The  Russian  Mir  the  Anarchist  Model  of  Government,  252 — 
Anarchism  Atheistic,  254 — Ultra-re volutionarj-,  255 — Propaganda  of 
Deed,  256 — Disunity  and  Weakness  of  Anarchism,  257. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

RUSSIAN-   NIHIUSM. 

Haxthausen's  Opinion  of  Russia's  Safety  from  Socialism,  259 — Successive 
Phases  of  Nihilism,  260— Origin  of  Nihilism,  261 — Influence  of  the 
Rural  Commune  on  Revolutionary  Thought,  262 — Decabrist  Conspir- 
acy of  1825,  263 — Extreme  Opinions  at  Russian  Universities  in  Reign 
of  Nicholas,  264 — Ascension  of  Alexander  II.,  264 — Alexander  Herzen, 
265 — TurgeniefiP  and  the  word  Nihilist,  266 — Koscheleff  and  Fircks's 
Accounts  of  Nihilism,  267 — Causes  of  it,  268 — Nihilist  Sunday  Schools, 
Tchernycheffsky,  269 — Effect  of  Emancipation  of  Serfs,  270 — Ruined 
Landlords,  270— Jews,  271 — Heretics,  272 — Bakunin,  273— Herzen's 
Recantation  of  Revolutionism,  273— Bakunin  in  London,  274— His 
"  Amorphism,"  274 — His  Picture  of  the  Good  Revolutionist,  275 — 
Netchai'eff  founds  Branches  of  the  International  in  Russia,  276 — The 
first  Attempt  on  the  Czar,  276 — Reversion  to  Arbitrary  and  Despotic 


Contents. 

Government,  276— Bakunin  and  Lavroff  at  Zurich — "Going  into 
the  People,"  279— Secret  Societies,  280— Nihilist  Arrests  and  Trials, 
281— Terrorism,  282 — Assassination  of  Czar,  283 — Present  Socialist 
Parties,  283— The  Black  Division  Party,  283— Alarming  Growth  of  a 
Proletariat  in  Russia,  284 — Impoverishment  of  Peasantry,  286 — Break 
up  of  Communistic  System,  288 — Dissolution  of  House  Communities, 
289 — The  Black  Division,  292 — The  Labour  Emancipation  League, 
295. 


CHAPTER  X. 

SOCIALISM   AND  THE   SOCIAL  QUESTION. 

A  Social  Question  recognised  by  Contemporary  Economists,  297 — Mr. 
Cairnes  on  the  Situation,  297 — Socialist  Indictment  of  Existing 
mgirne,  299— 1st,  the  "  Iron  Law  of  Wages,"  300— Alleged  Deterio- 
ration of  Wage- Labourers'  Position  Unfounded,  801 — Their  Standard 
of  Living  Better,  302 — Their  Individual  Share  in  the  National  Wealth 
more,  304 — The  "  Iron  Law  "  Misunderstood  by  Socialists,  305 — The 
"  Iron  Law  "  Itself  Unsound,  307 — The  Rate  of  Wages  really  Depends 
on  the  per  capita  Production,  307— Prospects  of  Increasing  per 
capita  Production,  312— Piecework,  314 — Shorter  Day  of  Labour, 
318 — 2nd,  Alleged  Multiplication  of  Vicissitudes,  323 — Effects  of 
Machinery,  323— Temporary  Redundancies,  324 — Serious  Redun- 
dancies Lessening,  324 — Value  of  Good  System  of  Commercial  Statis- 
tics, 325 — 3rd,  Alleged  Expropriation  of  the  Value  of  the  Labourer's 
Work,  327— How  Value  is  Constituted,  327— Justice  of  Interest,  329 
-—Social  Importance  of  Work  of  Capitalist  Employer,  330 — Public 
Value  of  Private  Property,  333 — Value  of  Freedom,  334 — Laissez- 
faire^  336 — Necessity  for  Opportunities  of  Investment,  338 — Co- 
operative Production,  338 — Advantage  of  Interlacing  of  Classes,  340 
— Reason  of  exceptionally  good  House  Accommodation  among  Work- 
ing Classes  of  Sheffield,  341. 


CHAPTER  XL 

STATE  SOCIALISM. 

1.  State  Socialism  and  English  Economics. 
M,  Leon  Say  on  State  Socialism,  345 — State  Property  and  State  Industries 
in  Germany,  345 — Mr.  Goschen  and  others  on  Change  in  English 
Opinion  regarding  State  Intervention,  346 -Their  Views  Exaggerated 
and  undiscriminating,  347 — Little  done  in  England  in  Nationalizing 
Industries,  348 — Much  done  in  enlargingPopular  Rights,  349 — English 
Thinkers  never  Believers  in  Laissez-faire,  351 — Except  Mr.  H.  Spen- 
cer, 352 — Adam  Smith's  "  Simple  and  Obvious  System  of  Natural 
Liberty,"  353— His  Theory  of  Social  Politics,  356— Ricardo's  Views, 
359— McCulloch's,    360— On    the    Manufacturing   System,    362— On 


Contents.  xi 

Crises,  363 — On  Irish  Pauper  Labour,  364 — On  Factory  Legislation, 
366— On  Housing  the  Poor,  366— On  the  Poor  Law,  368— The  So- 
called  Manchester  School.  372— The  English  Theory  of  Social  Politics, 
378. 

2.  The  Xature  and  Principle  of  State  Socialism. 

Different  Definitions  of  Socialism,  374 — Origin  and  Meaning  of  State 
Socialism,  379— The  Social  Monarchists,  380 — Rodbertus,  380 — His 
Theory  of  Social  Politics,  381— M.  de  Laveleye  and  Establishment  of 
Equalitj'^  of  Conditions,  384 — Alleged  Disinheritance  of  the  People 
from  the  Primitive  Economic  Eights,  385 — Mr.  Chamberlain's  Doc- 
trine of  "  Eansom,"  3S6 — Professor  A.  Wagner's  State  Socialism,  387. 

8.  State  Socialism  and  Social  Reform,. 

Cobden's  Praise  of  the  Prussian  Government  for  its  Social  "Work, 
893 — Property,  a  Requisite  of  Progress,  not  of  Freedom,  394 — Limits 
of  Legitimate  Intervention,  395 — Short  Definition  of  State  Socialism, 
899 — Error  of  Plea  for  State  Socialism  as  Extinguisher  of  Chance, 
399 — As  Saving  the  Waste  from  Competition,  400 — Wastefulness  of 
Socialism,  401 — As  shown  in  Samoa,  401— In  England  under  Old  Poor 
Law,  402 — In  Brook  Farm,  402 — Idleness  the  Destroyer  of  the  Ameri- 
can Owenite  and  Fourierist  Commiinities,  403 — Idleness  the  Great 
Difficultj^  in  the  Shaker  and  Rappist  Communities,  405 — "  Old  Slug," 
406 — Contentment  with  Squalid  Conditions,  407 — Special  Liability  to 
Mismanagement,  408. 

4.  State  Socialism  and  State  Management. 

Natural  Qualities  and  Defects  of  State  as  Industrial  Manager,  409— 
Post  Office,  410 — Dockyards,  410 — Forestry,  412 — Mint  and  other 
Forms  of  Attesting,  412— Monopolies,  413 — Municipal  Management 
of  Gas  and  Water  Supply,  413 — Land  Nationalization,  414 — State 
Eailways,  415 — State  Insurance  in  New  Zealand,  417 — Results  of 
Joint-Stock  Management  and  Private  Management  in  Massachusetts, 
417. 

5.  State  Socialism  and  Popular  Right. 

Why  Impracticable  Legislation  is  Socialistic,  418 — Rule  of  Interven- 
tion for  Realizing  Eights,  419 — Right  to  Existence,  421 — Right  to 
Superannuation,  421— Right  to  Labour,  423 — Problem  of  the  Un- 
employed, 425 — Free  Education,  Libraries,  Parks,  427 — Where  Stop  ? 
427 — Legal  Fixing  of  Prices,  as  in  Fares  and  Rates,  428 — Of  Fair  Rent, 
429 — Of  Fair  Wages,  430 — Compulsory  Arbitration,  430— Legal 
Minimum  Wages,  431 — Sweating  System  and  Starvation  Wages, 
432 — International  Compulsory  Eight  Hours  Day,  434. 


jcii  Contents. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  AGRARIAN   SOCIALISM  OF  HENRY   GEORGE. 

Mr.  George  Predicts  that  his  Book  would  find  Apostles,  441 — Fulfilment 
of  the  Prediction,  441 — Sisyphism,  442 — Loses  His  Religious  Belief 
through  Perception  of  Poverty,  443 — Recovers  it  again,  445 — 1st,  His 
Prohlem,  445 — Its  unverified  Assumption,  445 — Evidence  of  Facts 
against  it,  448 — Average  Scale  of  Living  has  Risen,  449— Proportion 
of  Paupers,  unable  to  obtain  it,  has  Declined,  449 — Special  Decline  of 
Able-bodied  Pauperism,  450 — Increase  of  Length  of  Life,  452 — Mr. 
George  Changes  his  Problem  from  one  of  Quantity  to  one  of  Propor- 
tion, 453 — Rent  really  no  larger  Proportion  of  National  Wealth  or 
even  of  Agricultural  Produce  than  bdfore,  454 — Wages  no  Smaller 
Proportion,  456 — Indications  of  Increasing  Distribution  of  Wealth, 
457 — 2nd,  Mr.  George's  Explanation,  461 — Alleged  Tendency  of 
Wages  to  a  Minimum  that  gives  but  a  Bare  Living,  462 — The  Wages 
Fund  and  Population  Theories,  464 — Mr.  George's  New  Population 
Theory,  465 — His  New  Wages  Fund  Theory,  468 — His  Explanation 
of  the  Distribution  of  Wealth  without  taking  Profits  into  Account, 
474 — Views  on  Rent,  476 — on  Interest,  483 — Wages,  484 — Margin  of 
Cultivation,  484 — Absurdities  of  his  Explanation,  485 — 3rd,  Mr. 
George's  Remedy,  487 — Land  Nationalization  Movement  in  England, 
488— Futility  of  Mr  George's  Remedy,  489— Confiscation,  490— Differ- 
ence of  Mr.  George's  Proposal  from  Mr.  Mill's,  491 — Agricultural 
Land  as  truly  the  Fruit  of  Labour  as  other  Commodities,  492— Real 
Distinction  between  Land  and  other  Property,  494— Social  Claim  on 
all  Property,  495 — Is  Private  Property  the  best  Guarantee  for  the 
most  Productive  use  of  Land  ?  496^Land  Nationalization  no  Assis- 
tance to  the  Reforms  that  are  Needed,  498. 


CHAPTER  I. 


INTRODUCTOEY. 


It  was  a  common  topic  of  congratulation  at  the  Exhibition  of 
1862  that  the  political  atmosphere  of  Europe  was  then  entirely 
free  from  the  revolutionary  alarms  which  overclouded  the  first 
Exhibition  in  1851  ;  but  in  that  very  year  the  old  clouds 
began  to  gather  once  more  at  different  quarters  of  the  horizon. 
It  was  in  1862  that  Lassalle  delivered  to  a  club  of  working 
men  in  Berlin  his  address  on  "  The  Present  Epoch  of  the 
World,  and  the  Idea  of  the  Working  Class,"  which  was  pub- 
lished shortly  afterwards  under  the  title  of  "  The  Working 
Man's  Programme,"  and  which  has  been  called  by  his  friends 
"  The  Wittenberg  Theses "  of  the  new  socialist  movement ; 
and  it  was  at  the  Exhibition  itself  that  those  relations  were 
established  between  the  delegates  of  English  and  French  trade 
societies  which  issued  eventually  in  the  organization  of  the 
International.  The  double  train  thus  laid  has  put  in  motion  a 
propaganda  of  social  revolution  more  vigorous,  widespread,  and 
dangerous  than  any  which  has  preceded  it. 

But  though  the  reappearance  of  socialism  was  not  imme- 
diately looked  for  at  the  time,  it  could  cause  no  serious  surprise 
to  any  one  who  considered  how  nearly  the  socialist  theory  is 
allied  with  some  of  the  ruling  ideas  of  modern  times,  and  how 
many  points  of  attraction  it  presents  at  once  to  the  impatient 
philanthropy  of  enthusiasts,  to  the  passions  of  the  multitude, 
and  to  the  narrow  but  insistent  logic  of  the  numerous  class  of 
minds  that  make  little  account  of  the  complexity  of  life. 
Socialism  will  probably  never  keep  long  away  during  the 
present  transitional  period  of  society,  and  there  is  therefore  less 
interest  in  the  mere  fact  of  its  reappearance  than  in  marking 
the  particular  form  in  which,  after  a  prolonged  retirement,  it 


2  Co7itemporary  Socialism. 

has  actually  returned;  for  this  may  perhaps  be  reasonably 
taken  to  be  its  most  vital  and  enduring  type,  and  consequently 
that  with  which  we  shall  mainly  have  to  reckon  in  the  future. 

Now  the  present  movement  is,  before  all,  political  and 
revolutionary.  The  philanthropic  and  experimental  forms 
of  socialism,  which  played  a  conspicuous  role  before  1818, 
perished  then  in  the  wreck  of  the  Revolution,  and  have  never 
risen  to  life  again.  The  old  schools  have  dispersed.  Their 
doctrines,  their  works,  their  very  hopes  have  gone.  The 
theories  of  man's  entire  dependence  on  circumstances,  of  the 
rehabilitation  of  the  flesh,  of  the  passional  attraction,  once  in 
everybody's  mouth,  have  sunk  into  oblivion.  The  communi- 
ties of  Owenites,  St.  Simonians,  Fourierists,  Icarians,  which 
multiplied  for  a  time  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  are  extinct. 
The  socialists  of  the  present  day  have  discarded  all  belief  in 
the  possibility  of  effecting  any  social  regeneration  except  by 
means  of  political  authority,  and  the  first  object  of  their  en- 
deavours is  therefore  the  conquest  of  the  powers  of  the  State. 
There  are  some  exceptions,  but  these  are  very  unimportant. 
The  communistic  societies  of  the  United  States,  for  instance, 
are  mostly  organizations  of  eccentric  religious  sects  which  have 
no  part  or  influence  in  the  life  of  the  century.  The  Colinsian 
CoUectivists,  followers  of  the  Belgian  socialist  Colins,  are  a 
mere  handful ;  and  the  Familistere  of  Guise  in  France — a 
remarkable  institution,  founded  since  184.8  by  an  old  disciple 
of  Fourier,  though  not  on  Fourier's  plan — stands  quite  alone, 
and  has  no  imitators.  Non-political  socialism  may  accordingly 
be  said  to  have  practically  disappeared. 

Not  only  so,  but  out  of  the  several  sorts  and  varieties  of 
political  socialism,  only  one  has  revived  in  any  strength,  and 
that  is  the  extremest  and  most  revolutionary.  It  is  the  demo- 
cratic communism  of  the  Young  Hegelians,  and  it  scouts  the 
very  suggestion  of  State-help,  and  will  content  itself  with 
nothing'  short  of  State-transformation.  Schemes  such  as  were 
popular  and  noisy  thirty  years  ago — schemes,  involving  indeed 
organic  changes,  but  organic  changes  of  only  a  partial  char- 
acter— have  gone  to  their  rest.  Louis  Blanc,  for  example, 
was  then  a  name  of  some  power;  but,  remarkably  enough, 
though  Louis  Blanc  was  but  the  other  year  buried  with  great 


Introductory.  3 

honour,  his  Organization  of  Labour  seems  to  be  as  completely 
forgotten  as  the  Circulus  of  Leroux.  M.  G.  de  Molinari  writes 
an  interesting  account  of  the  debates  that  took  place  in  the 
working  men's  clubs  of  Paris  in  the  year  1868-9 — the  first 
year  they  were  granted  liberty  of  meeting  after  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Second  Empire — and  he  states  that  while  Fourier 
and  Cabet  were  still  quoted  by  old  disciples,  though  without 
any  idea  of  their  systems  being  of  practical  moment,  Louis 
Blanc's  name  was  not  even  mentioned.  Proudhon's  gospel  of 
a  State  bank  of  mutual  credit  for  furnishing  labourers  with 
capital,  by  issuing  inconvertible  notes  without  money  and 
without  price,  has  still  a  sprinkling  of  faithful  believers,  who 
call  themselves  Mutualists ;  but  they  are  extremely  few,  and, 
as  a  rule,  the  socialists  of  France  at  the  present  day,  like 
those  of  Germany,  put  their  faith  in  iron  rather  than  paper. 
What  they  want  is  a  democracy  of  labour,  to  use  one  of  their 
own  phrases — that  is,  a  State  in  which  power  and  property 
shall  be  based  on  labour ;  where  citizenship  shall  depend  on  a 
labour  qualification,  instead  of  a  qualification  of  birth  or  of 
property  ;  where  there  shall  be  no  citizen  who  enjoys  without 
labouring,  and  no  citizen  who  labours  without  enjoj'ing ; 
where  every  one  who  is  able  to  work  shall  have  employment,. 
and  every  one  who  has  wrought  shall  retain  the  whole  pro- 
duce of  his  labour ;  and  where  accordingly,  as  the  indispens- 
able prerequisite  of  the  whole  scheme,  the  land  of  the  country 
and  all  other  instruments  of  production  shall  be  made  the  joint 
property  of  the  community,  and  the  conduct  of  all  industrial 
operations  be  placed  under  the  direct  administration  of  the 
State.  Furthermore,  all  this  is  contended  for  as  a  matter  of 
simple  right  and  justice  to  the  labouring  classes,  on  the  ground 
that  the  wealth  of  the  nation  belongs  to  the  hands  that  made 
it ;  it  is  contended  for  as  an  obligation  of  the  State,  bepause 
the  State  is  held  to  be  merely  the  organized  will  of  the.people, 
and  the  people  is  the  labouring  class ;  and  it  is  contended  for 
as  an  object  of  immediate  accomplishment — if  possible,  by 
ordinary  constitutional  means ;  but,  if  not,  hy  revolution. 

This  is  the  form  in  which  socialism  has  reappeared,  and  it 
may  be  described  in  three  words  as  Revolutionary  Socialist 
Democracy.    The  movement  is  divided  into  two  main  branches 


4  Contemporary  Socialism. 

— socialism  proper,  or  collectivism,  as  it  is  sometimes  called, 
and  anarchism.  There  are  anarchists  who  are  not  socialists, 
but  hold  strongly  by  an  individualist  constitution  of  property. 
They  are  very  few,  however,  and  the  great  mass  of  the  party 
known  by  that  name  in  our  day,  including  the  Russian  Nihilists, 
are  as  ardent  believers  in  the  economic  socialism  of  Karl  Marx 
as  the  Social  Democrats  of  Germany  themselves.  They  diverge 
from  the  latter  on  a  question  of  future  government ;  but 
the  differences  between  the  two  are  only  such  as  the  same 
movement  might  be  expected  to  exhibit  in  passing  through 
different  media,  personal  or  national.  Modern  democrats  have 
been  long  divided  into  Centralists  and  Federalists — the  one 
party  seeking  to  give  to  the  democratic  republic  they  contem- 
plate a  strongly  centralized  form  of  government,  and  the  other 
preferring  to  leave  the  local  communes  comparatively  inde- 
pendent and  sovereign,  and  free,  if  they  choose,  to  unite  them- 
selves in  convenient  federations.  The  federal  republic  has 
always  been  the  favourite  ideal  of  the  Democrats  of  Spain  and 
of  the  Communards  of  Paris,  and  there  is  generally  a  tendency 
among  Federalists,  in  their  impatience  of  all  central  authority, 
to  drop  the  element  of  federation  out  of  their  ideal  altogether, 
and  to  advocate  the  form  of  opinion  known  as  "  anarchy  " — 
that  is,  the  abolition  of  all  superior  government.  It  was  very 
natural  that  this  ancient  feud  among  the  democrats  should 
appear  in  the  ranks  of  sociaHst  democracy,  and  it  was  equally 
natural  that  the  Russian  Radicals,  hating  the  autocracy  of 
their  country  and  idealizing  its  rural  communes,  should 
become  the  chief  adherents  of  the  federalist  and  even  the 
anarchic  tradition. 

This  is  the  only  point  of  principle  that  separates  anarchism 
from  socialism.  In  other  respects  anarchism  may  be  said  to 
be  but  an  extremer  phase  of  socialism.  It  indulges  in  more 
violent  methods,  and  iu  a  more  omnivorous  spirit  of  destruc- 
tion. Its  fury  takes  a  wider  sweep ;  it  attacks  all  current 
beliefs  and  all  existing  institutions ;  it  puts  its  hopes  in  univer- 
sal chaos.  I  shall  endeavour  in  a  future  chapter  to  explain, 
from  peculiarities  of  the  national  character  and  culture,  why 
this  gospel  of  chaos  should  find  so  much  acceptance  in  Russia ; 
but   it  is  no  exclusively  Russian  product.     It  was  preached 


Introductory.  5 

with  singular  coolness,  as  -will  be  subsequently  shown,  by- 
some  of  the  young  Hegelians  of  Germany  before  1848,  and  it 
obtains  among  the  more  volatile  members  of  most  socialist 
organizations  still.  Attacks  on  religion,  patriotism,  the  family, 
are  very  usual  accessories  of  their  practical  agitations  every- 
where. As  institutions  and  beliefs  are  seen  to  lend  strength 
to  each  other,  teeth  set  on  edge  against  one  are  easily  brought 
to  gnash  at  all.  A  sharp  check  from  the  public  authority 
generally  brings  out  to  the  front  this  extremer  element  in 
German  socialism.  After  the  repressive  legislation  of  1878 
the  German  socialists  struck  the  restriction  of  proceeding  "  by 
legal  methods  "  out  of  their  programme,  and  the  wilder  spirits 
among  them  would  be  content  with  nothing  short  of  a  policy 
of  general  destruction,  and,  being  expelled  from  the  party, 
started  an  organization  of  their  own  on  thoroughly  anarchist 
lines. 

Under  these  influences,  the  word  socialism  has  come  to 
contract  a  new  meaning,  and  is  now  generally  defined  in  a 
way  that  would  exclude  the  very  theories  it  was  originally 
invented  to  denote.  Its  political  element — its  demand  on  the 
public  power  in  behalf  of  the  labouring  class — is  taken  to  be 
the  pith  and  essence  of  the  system.  Mr.  Cairnes,  for  example, 
says  that  the  circumstance  which  distinguishes  socialism  from 
all  other  modes  of  social  speculation  is  its  invocation  of  the 
powers  of  the  State,  and  he  finds  fault  with  Mr.  Mill  for  de- 
scribing himself  in  his  "  Autobiography  "  as  a  socialist,  merely 
because  his  ideal  of  ultimate  improvement  had  more  in  common 
with  the  ideal  of  socialistic  reformers  than  with  the  views  of 
those  who  in  contradistinction  would  be  called  orthodox.  The 
passage  from  the  "  Autobiography"  runs  as  follows: — "While 
we  repudiated  with  the  greatest  energy  that  tyranny  of  society 
over  the  individual  which  most  socialistic  systems  are  supposed 
to  involve,  we  yet  looked  forward  to  a  time  when  society  will 
no  longer  be  divided  into  the  idle  and  the  industrious ;  when 
the  rule  that  they  who  do  not  work  shall  not  eat  will  be  applied, 
not  to  paupers  only,  but  impartially  to  all ;  when  the  division 
of  the  produce  of  labour,  instead  of  depending,  as  in  so  great  a 
degree  it  now  does,  on  the  accident  of  birth,  will  be  made  by 
concert  on  an  acknowledged  principle  of  justice  ;  and  when  it 


6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

will  no  longer  either  be,  or  be  thought  to  be,  impossible  for 
human  beings  to  exert  themselves  strenuously  in  procuring 
benefits  which  are  not  to  be  exclusively  their  own,  but  to  be 
shared  with  the  society  they  belong  to."  ("  Autobiography,"  pp. 
231-232).  On  this  passage  Mr.  Cairnes  observes  :— "  If  to  look 
forward  to  such  a  state  of  things  as  an  ideal  to  be  striven  for 
is  socialism,  I  at  once  acknowledge  myself  a  socialist ;  but  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  idea  which  '  socialism '  conveys  to  most 
minds  is  not  that  of  any  particular  form  of  society  to  be  realized 
at  a  future  time  when  the  character  of  human  beings  and  the 
conditions  of  human  life  are  widely  different  from  what  they 
now  are,  but  rather  certain  modes  of  action,  more  especially 
the  employment  of  the  powers  of  the  State  for  the  instant 
accomphshment  of  ideal  schemes,  which  is  the  invariable 
attribute  of  all  projects  generally  regarded  as  socialistic.  So 
entirely  is  this  the  case  that  it  is  common  to  hear  any  proposal 
which  is  thought  to  involve  an  undue  extension  of  the  powers 
of  the  State  branded  as  socialistic,  whatever  be  the  object  it 
may  seek  to  accomplish.  After  all,  the  question  is  one  of 
nomenclature  merely ;  but  people  are  so  greatly  governed  by 
words  that  I  cannot  but  regret  that  a  philosophy  of  social  life 
with  which  I  so  deeply  sympathize  should  be  prejudiced  by 
verbal  associations  fitted,  as  it  seems  to  me,  only  to  mislead." 
("  Leading  Principles  of  PoHtical  Economy,"  p.  816.) 

Mr.  Caimes's  objection  is  just ;  for  a  reformer's  position  ought 
to  be  determined,  not  by  the  distant  ideal  he  may  think  best, 
if  the  conditions  were  ripe  for  its  realization,  but  by  the  policy 
which  he  counts  to  be  of  present  importance  under  the  con- 
ditions that  exist.  He  may  cherish,  as  many  orthodox 
economists  do,  the  socialist  hope.  He  may  look  for  a  time 
when  comfort  and  civilization  shall  be  more  universally  and 
securely  diffused ;  when  heads  and  hands  in  the  world  of 
labour  shall  work  together  in  amity;  when  competition  and 
exclusive  private  property  and  self-interest  shall  be  swallowed 
up  in  love  and  common  labour.  But  he  knows  that  the  trans- 
formation must  be  gradual,  and  that  the  material  conditions  of 
it  must  never  be  pushed  on  in  advance  of  the  intellectual  and 
moral.  And  this  cuts  him  off  by  a  whole  diameter  from  those 
who  are  now  known  as  socialists.     In  every  question  of  the  day 


Introductory.  7 

he  will  be  found  in  an  opposite  camp  from  them.  For  he 
makes  the  ideal  what  it  is  and  ought  to  be — the  goal  of  his 
action ;  they  make  it  their  starting-point,  and  the  peculiarity 
of  the  case  is  that  with  their  view  of  the  situation  they  cannot 
make  it  anything  else.  For  to  their  mind  the  struggle  they 
are  engaged  in  is  not  a  struggle  for  amelioration,  but  for  plain 
and  elementary  right.  It  is  not  a  question  of  providing  greater 
happiness  for  the  greatest  number ;  it  is  a  question  of  doing 
them  bare  justice,  of  giving  them  their  own,  of  protecting 
them  against  a  disguised  but  very  real  expropriation.  They 
declare  that,  under  the  present  industrial  arrangements,  the 
labouring  classes  are  in  effect  robbed  of  most  of  the  value  of 
the  work  of  their  hands,  and  of  course  the  suppression  of 
systematic  robbery  is  an  immediate  obligation  of  the  present. 
Justice  is  a  basis  to  start  from  now,  if  possible,  and  not  a 
dream  to  await  hereafter.  First  let  the  labouring  man  have 
his  rights,  they  cry,  and  then,  and  then  only,  shall  you  have 
the  way  clear  for  any  further  parley  about  his  future.  It  is 
true  that  he  is  not  the  victim  of  individual  rapacity  so  much 
as  of  the  system,  and  that  he  cannot  get  his  rights  till  the 
system  is  completely  changed  ;  but  the  sj'-stem,  they  argue, 
can  never  be  completely  changed  except  by  the  power  of  the 
State,  and  why  then  not  change  it  at  once  ?  Now,  it  is 
obvious  how,  to  people  who  take  this  view  of  the  matter,  there 
should  seem  no  other  alternative  but  an  instant  reconstruction 
of  industrial  society  at  the  hands  of  the  State.  For  if  it  is 
justice  that  has  to  be  done,  then  it  appears  only  natural  to 
conclude  that  it  falls  upon  the  State,  as  the  organ  of  justice,  to 
do  it,  and  that  it  cannot  do  it  too  soon.  The  demand  for  the 
immediate  accomplishment  of  their  scheme  by  public  authority 
is  thus  no  accidental  accessory  of  it  merely,  but  is  really  in- 
separable from  the  ideas  on  which  the  scheme  is  founded.  It 
is,  in  fact,  so  much,  if  I  may  use  the  word,  the  note  of  socialism 
wherever  socialism  makes  itself  heard  in  the  world  now,  that 
it  can  only  produce  confusion  to  give  the  name  of  socialist  to 
persons  who  hold  this  note  in  abhorrence,  and  virtually  desire 
no  more  than  the  gradual  triumph  of  co-operation. 

It  may  be  answered  that  the  latter,  like  the  former,  aim  not 
at  a  mere  reform  of  the  present  industrial  system,  but  at  an 


8  Contemporary  Socialism. 

essential  change  in  its  fundamental  principles — at  an  eventual 
suppression  of  exclusive  property  and  unrestricted  competition 
— and  that  it  is  therefore  only  proper  to  classify  them  with 
those  -who  seek  the  like  important  end,  however  they  may 
diflfer  from  the  latter  as  to  the  means  and  seasons  of  action. 
This  might  be  right,  perhaps,  if  our  only  consideration  were 
to  furnish  a  philosophical  classification  of  opinions  ;  but  we 
have  to  deal  with  a  living  and  agitating  party  whose  name 
and  work  are  much  canvassed,  and  there  is  at  any  rate  great 
practical  inconvenience  in  extending  the  current  designation 
of  that  party  so  as  to  include  persons  who  object  strongly  to 
its  whole  immediate  work. 

The  inconvenience  has  doubled  since  Mill's  time,  because 
socialism  has  now  become  a  much  more  definite  programme  of 
a  much  more  definite  party.  Even  in  the  old  romantic  schools 
the  ruling  characteristic  of  socialism  was  always  its  effort  to 
realize  some  wrong  view  of  distributive  justice.  It  was  more 
than  merely  an  impracticable  plan  for  the  extinction  of  poverty, 
or  the  more  equable  diffusion  of  wealth,  or  the  correction  of 
excessive  inequahties,  although  that  seems  to  be  so  prevailing 
an  impression  that  persons  who  have  what  they  conceive  more 
feasible  proposals  to  offer  for  these  purposes  put  them  forward 
under  the  name  of  Practicable  Socialism  But  so  far  as  these 
purposes  go,  they  are  common  to  almost  all  schools  of  social 
reformers,  even  the  most  individualist.  If  socialism  meant 
only  feeling  earnestly  about  those  inequalities,  or  desiring 
earnestly  their  redress,  or  even  strongly  resenting  their  incon- 
sistency with  an  ideal  of  justice,  then  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  is 
as  much  a  socialist  as  either  Marx  or  Lassalle.  '*  The  fates  of 
the  great  majority,"  says  he,  "  have  ever  been,  and  doubtless 
still  are,  so  sad  that  it  is  painful  to  think  of  them.  Unques- 
tionably the  existing  type  of  social  organization  is  one  which 
none  who  care  for  their  kind  can  contemplate  with  satisfaction  ; 
and  unquestionably  men's  activities  accompanj-ing  this  type 
are  far  from  being  admirable.  The  strong  divisions  of  rank  and 
the  ixamense  inequalities  of  means  are  at  variance  with  that 
ideal  of  human  relations  on  which  the  sj'^mpathetic  imagina- 
tion likes  to  dwell;  and  the  average  conduct,  under  the  pressure 
and  excitement  of  social  life  as  at  present  carried  on,  is  in 


Introductory.  9 

sundry  respects  repulsive."  ("  A  Plea  for  Liberty,"  p.  4.) 
Socialists  are  far  from  being  the  only  persons  whose  sense  of 
justice  is  offended  by  much  in  the  existing  regime^  and  many 
very  moderate  politicians  have  held  that  the  policy  of  the  law- 
should  always  favour  the  diffusion  of  wealth  rather  than  its 
concentration  ;  that  it  should  always  favour  the  active  business 
interest  rather  than  the  idle  interest;  that  it  should  always 
favour  the  weaker  and  more  unprotected  interest  rather  than 
the  more  powerful  and  the  more  contumelious.  The  socialism 
comes  in  not  with  the  condemnation  of  the  existing  order  of 
things,  but  with  the  policy  recommended  for  its  correction. 
There  is  no  socialism  in  recognising  the  plain  fact  that  the  gifts 
of  fortune,  whether  riches  or  talents,  are  not  distributed  in  the 
world  according  to  merit.  There  is  no  socialism  in  declaring 
that  the  rich,  by  reason  of  their  riches,  have  responsibilities 
towards  the  poor  ;  or  that  the  poor,  by  reason  of  their  poverty, 
have  claims  upon  the  rich.  Nor  is  there  any  sociaUsm  in 
holding  that  the  State  has  responsibihties  towards  the  poor, 
and  that  the  law  ought,  when  necessary,  to  assert  the  reason- 
able claims  of  poverty,  or  enforce  the  reasonable  duties  and 
obligations  of  wealth.  All  that  merely  says  that  justice  and 
humanity  ought  to  govern  in  economic  affairs,  as  they  ought 
to  govern  in  all  other  affairs  of  life ;  and  this  is  an  axiomatic 
position  which  nobody  in  the  world  denies.  Only,  axiomatic 
though  it  is,  it  seems  to  dawn  on  many  minds  like  a  revelation 
late  in  life,  and  they  feel  they  are  no  longer  as  other  men, 
and  that  they  must  henceforth  call  themselves  socialists.  This 
awakening  to  the  injustice  or  inhumanity  of  things  is  not 
socialism,  though  socialism  may  often  proceed  out  of  it.  So- 
cialism is  always  some  scheme  for  the  removal  of  one  injustice 
by  the  infliction  of  a  greater — some  scheme  which,  by  mis- 
taking the  rights  and  wrongs  of  the  actual  situation,  or  the 
natural  operation  of  its  own  provisions,  or  any  other  cause, 
would  leave  things  more  inequitable  and  more  offensive  to  a 
sound  sense  of  justice  than  it  found  them.  The  rich  idler,  for 
example,  is  always  a  great  offence  to  the  socialist,  because, 
according  to  the  socialist  sense  of  justice,  no  man  ought  to  be 
rich  without  working  for  his  riches ;  and  many  other  people  will 
possibly  agree  with  the  socialist  in  that.     But  then  the  socialist 


lo  Contemporary  Socialism. 

proposes  to  abolish  the  rich  idler  by  a  scheme  which  would 
breed  the  poor  idler  in  overwhelming  abundance,  and  for  the 
sake  of  equalizing  poverty  and  wealth,  would  really  equalize 
indolence  and  industry — at  once  a  more  fatal  and  a  more  offen- 
sive form  of  injustice  than  that  which  it  was  designed  to  redress. 
SociaHsts  find  fault  with  the  present  order  of  things  because 
the  many  workers  support  the  few  idlers ;  but  most  of  the  old 
socialist  communities  of  France  and  America  failed  because 
of  the  opposite  and  greater  injustice,  that  the  few  workers 
found  themselves  supporting  the  many  idlers,  and  the  con- 
sequence was  a  more  harrowing  sense  of  unfairness  and  a 
more  universal  impoverishment  than  prevailed  under  the  old 
s^'stem.  The  rich  idler  who  merely  lives  on  what  he  has 
inherited  may  not  belong  to  an  ideal  state  of  society  ;  but  the 
poor  idler,  who  shirks  and  dawdles  and  malingers,  because  an 
indulgent  community  relieves  him  of  the  necessity  of  harder 
exertion,  is  equally  unideal,  and  he  is  much  more  hurtful  in 
the  reality. 

But  the  socialists,  in  their  mistaken  ideas  of  justice,  do  not 
stop  at  the  rich  idler.  The  rich  idler  is,  in  their  view,  a  robber ; 
but  the  rich  worker  is  a  greater  robber  still.  It  is  characteristic 
of  socialist  thought  to  hold  the  accumulations  of  the  rich  to 
be  in  some  sort  of  way  unjustly  acquired  by  spoiling  the  poor. 
The  poor  are  always  represented  as  the  disinherited;  their  pro- 
perty is  declared  to  have  been  taken  from  them  perforce  by 
bad  laws  and  bad  economic  arrangements  and  delivered  with- 
out lien  into  the  hands  of  the  capitalists.  This  view  lived  and 
moved  in  the  old  socialism,  but  it  has  been  worked  into  a 
reasoned  and  professedly  scientific  argument  as  a  basis  and 
justification  for  the  new.  The  old  socialism  usually  exclaimed 
against  the  justice  of  interest,  rent,  property,  and  all  forms  of 
labourless  income ;  but  the  new  socialism  pretends  to  prove 
the  charge  by  economic  principles.  It  alleges  that  all  these 
forms  of  income  are  so  many  different  forms  of  plundering  the 
working  classes,  who  are  the  real  producers  of  wealth,  and  it 
sets  up  a  claim  on  behalf  of  those  classes  to  the  whole  value  of 
the  things  they  produce  without  any  deductions  for  rent, 
interest,  or  profit — the  right,  as  they  call  it,  of  the  labourer  to 
the  whole  produce  of  his  labour.     Now  this  is  a  verv  distinct 


Introductory.  II 

and  definite  claim  pf  right  and  justice,  and  the  whole  final 
object  of  the  socialist  organizations  of  the  present  day  is  to  get 
it  realized,  and  realized  at  once,  as  claims  of  right  and  justice 
ought,  and  must,  by  the  powers  of  the  State.  I  shall  have 
better  opportunities  at  a  later  part  of  this  work  of  proving  how 
absolutely  unfounded  and  unjust  is  this  claim;  but  I  mention  it 
here  merely  to  show  that  the  essence  of  modern  socialism  is 
more  and  more  unmistakably  revealing  itself  as  an  effort  to 
realize  some  false  ideal  of  social  or  distributive  justice.  This  is 
the  deepest  and  most  ruling  feature  of  socialism,  and  it  really 
necessitated  the  advance  of  the  movement  from  the  philan- 
thropic to  the  political  stage.  The  Owenites  were  content  with 
the  idea  of  a  voluntary  equality  of  wealth ;  but  that  is  now 
dismissed  as  the  mere  children's  dream,  for  popular  rights 
are  things  to  be  enforced  by  law,  and  questions  of  justice  are 
for  the  State.  The  political  character  of  the  movement  has 
only  brought  forward  into  stronger  relief  the  distorted  ideal  of 
justice  which  gave  it  being ;  and  it  has  therefore  become  much 
more  confusing  than  it  formerly  was  for  one  to  call  himself  a 
socialist  merely  because  he  dreams  of  better  things  to  come, 
or  because  he  would  like  to  extinguish  poverty,  or  to  diffuse 
property,  or  to  extend  the  principle  of  progressive  taxation,  or 
promote  eo-operation  or  profit-sharing,  or  any  other  just  or 
useful  measures  of  practical  social  reform.  That  is  shown 
very  well  by  a  simple  little  tidemark.  In  the  old  days  it  was 
still  possible,  though  it  never  was  a  happy  choice,  for  Maurice 
and  the  promoters  of  the  new  co-operation  movement  to  assume 
the  designation  of  Christian  Socialists  ;  but  although  Schultze- 
Delitzsch  was  working  on  the  same  lines  with  even  greater 
eclat  at  the  time  when  the  present  socialistic  movement  began 
in  Germany,  he  was  left  so  far  behind  that  he  was  thought 
the  great  anti- socialist,  and  the  people  to  whom  it  was 
now  considered  appropriate  to  transfer  the  name  of  socialists 
were  a  set  of  university  professors  and  others  who  advo- 
cated a  more  extended  use  of  the  powers  of  the  State  for  the 
solution  of  the  social  question  and  the  satisfaction  of  working- 
class  claims. 

The  Socialists   of  the   Chair   and   the   Christian   Socialists 
of  Germany  contemplate  nothing  beyond  correctives  and  pal- 


12  Contemporary  Socialism. 

liatives  of  existing  evils;  but  then  they  ask  the  State  to 
administer  them.  They  ask  the  State  to  inspect  factories, 
or  to  legalize  trades  unions,  or  to  organize  working-class  in- 
surance, or  to  fix  fair  wages.  Their  requests  may  be  wise  or 
foolish,  but  none  of  them,  nor  all  of  them  together,  would 
either  subvert  or  transform  the  existing  industrial  system  ; 
and  those  who  propound  them  are  called  socialists  merely 
because  they  make  it  part  of  the  State's  business  to  deal  with 
social  questions,  or  perhaps  more  particularly  because  they 
make  it  the  State's  business  to  deal  with  social  questions  in 
the  interest  of  the  working  class.  This  idea  of  socialism 
seems  largely  to  govern  the  current  employment  of  the  term. 
"We  often  hear  any  fresh  extension  of  the  functions  of  the 
State  condemned  as  socialistic  even  when  the  extension  is  not 
supposed  to  be  made  in  the  interests  of  the  working  class,  or 
to  be  conducive  to  them.  The  purchase  of  the  telegraphs 
was  socialistic ;  the  proposal  to  purchase  the  railways  is  social- 
istic ;  a  national  system  of  education  is  socialistic ;  and  an 
ecclesiastical  establishment,  if  it  were  now  brought  forward  as 
a  new  suggestion,  would  be  pronounced  socialistic  too.  Since, 
in  a  socialistic  community,  all  power  is  assigned  to  the 
State,  any  measure  which  now  increases  the  power  of  the 
State  gets  easily  represented  as  an  approach  to  socialism, 
especially  in  the  want — and  it  is  one  of  our  chief  wants  at 
present — of  a  rational  and  discriminating  theory  of  the  proper 
limits  and  sphere  of  public  authority. 

But  in  the  prevailing  use  of  the  word,  there  is  generally  the 
idea  that  the  intervention  of  authority  to  which  it  is  applied 
is  undertaken  to  promote  the  well-being  of  the  less  fortunate 
classes  of  society.  Since  socialism  seeks  to  construct  what 
may  be  called  a  working  class  State,  where  the  material  wel- 
fare of  each  shall  be  the  great  object  of  the  organization  of  all, 
it  is  common  to  represent  as  socialistic  any  proposal  that  asks 
the  State  to  do  something  for  the  material  well-being  of  the 
working  class,  and  to  describe  any  group  of  such  proposals,  or 
any  theory  that  favours  them,  by  the  name  of  socialism.  The 
so-called  State-socialism  of  Prince  Bismarck,  for  example,  is 
only,  as  he  has  himself  declared,  a  following-out  of  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  House  of  HohenzoUern,  the  princes  of  that  dynasty 


hitroductory.  1 3 

having  always  counted  it  one  of  their  first  duties  as  rulers 
to  exercise  a  special  protection  and  sohcitude  over  the  poorer 
classes  of  their  subjects.  The  old  ideas  of  feudal  protection 
and  paternal  government  have  charms  for  many  minds  that 
deplore  the  democratic  spirit  of  modern  society.  In  Germany 
they  have  been  maintained  by  the  feudal  classes,  the  court, 
and  the  clergy ;  their  presence  in  the  general  intellectual 
atmosphere  there  has  probably  facilitated  the  diffusion  of 
socialistic  views  ;  and  they  have  certainly  led  to  the  curious 
phenomenon  of  a  Conservative  socialism,  in  which  the  most 
obstinately  Conservative  interests  in  the  country  go  to  meet 
the  Social  Democrats  half  way,  and  promise  to  do  everything 
to  get  them  better  wages  if  they  will  but  come  to  church 
again  and  pray  for  the  Kaiser.  The  daj'^s  of  feudal  protection 
and  paternal  government  are  gone  ;  as  idealized  by  Carlyle, 
they  perhaps  never  existed  ;  at  any  rate,  in  an  age  of  equality 
they  are  no  longer  possible,  but  their  modern  counterparts  are 
precisely  the  ideas  of  social  protection  and  fraternal  govern- 
ment which  find  their  home  among  socialists.  On  the  strength 
of  this  analogy,  Prince  Bismarck  and  the  German  Emperor  are 
sometimes  spoken  of  as  socialists,  because  they  believe,  like 
the  latter,  that  the  State  should  exercise  a  general  or  even  a 
particular  providence  over  the  industrial  classes.  But  socialism 
is  more  than  such  a  belief.  It  is  not  only  a  theory  of  the 
State's  action,  but  a  theory  of  the  State's  action  founded  on 
a  theory  of  the  labourer's  right.  It  is  at  bottom,  as  I  have 
said,  a  mistaken  demand  for  social  justice.  It  tells  us  that 
an  enlargement  of  social  justice  was  made  when  it  was 
declared  that  every  man  shall  be  free — or,  in  other  words, 
that  every  man  shall  possess  completely  his  own  powers  of 
labour  ;  and  it  claims  that  a  new  enlargement  of  social 
justice  shall  be  made  now,  to  declare  that  every  man  shall 
possess  the  whole  produce  of  his  labour.  Now  those  who 
are  known  as  Conservative  Socialists,  in  patronizing  the 
working  people,  do  not  dream  of  countenancing  any  such 
claim,  or  even  of  admitting  in  the  least  that  there  is  any- 
thing positively  unjust  in  the  present  industrial  system.  None 
of  them  would  go  further  than  to  say  that  the  economic 
position  of  the  labourer  is  insufficient  to  satisfy  his  legitimate 


14  Contemporary  Socialism, 

aspirations  in  a  civilized  community;  few  of  them  would 
go  so  far.  It  is  therefore  highly  confusing  to  class  them 
among  socialists. 

M.  Limousin,  again,  speaks  of  a  "  minimum  of  socialism." 
He  would  call  no  man  a  socialist  who  does  not  hold  this  mini- 
mum, and  he  would  call  every  man  a  socialist  who  does  hold  it. 
And  the  minimum  of  socialism,  in  his  opinion,  is  this,  that 
the  State  owes  a  special  duty  of  protection  to  labourers  because 
they  are  poor,  and  that  this  duty  consists  in  securing  to  them 
a  more  equitable  part  in  the  product  of  general  labour.  The 
latter  clause  mighjb  have  been  better  expressed  in  less  general 
terms,  but  that  may  pass.  The  definition  recognises  at  any 
rate  that  the  paternal  or  the  fraternal  theory  of  government 
does  not  of  itself  constitute  socialism,  and  that  this  must  be 
combined  with  the  demand  for  a  new  distribution  of  wealth, 
on  supposed  grounds  of  justice  or  equity,  before  we  have  even 
the  minimum  of  socialism.  But  it  would  have  been  more 
correct  if  it  had  recognised  that  the  demand  for  a  better 
distribution  must  be  made  not  merely  on  supposed^  but  on 
erroneous  grounds  of  justice  or  equity.  If  the  proposed  dis- 
tribution is  really  just  and  equitable,  nothing  can  surely  be 
more  proper  than  to  ask  the  State  to  do  its  best  to  realize  it 
and  any  practicable  intervention  for  that  purpose  is  only  a 
matter  of  the  ordinary  expansion  of  the  law.  What  is  law, 
what  is  right,  but  a  protection  of  the  weak?  and  all  legal 
reform  is  a  transition  from  a  less  equitable  to  a  more  equitable 
system  of  arrangements.  The  equitable  requirements  of  the 
poor  are  the  natural  concern  of  the  State  on  the  narrowest 
theory  of  its  functions,  and  M.  Limousin's  definition  would 
really  include  all  rational  social  reformers  under  the  name  of 
socialist. 

If  we  are  in  this  way  to  stretch  the  word  socialism  first  to 
the  one  side,  till  it  takes  in  J.  S.  Mill  and  Maurice  and  the 
co-operators,  who  repudiate  authority  and  State  help,  and 
then  on  the  other  side,  till  it  takes  ih  Prince  Bismarck,  and 
our  own  aristocratic  Conservative  Young  England  Party,  and 
aJl  social  reformers  who  want  the  State  to  do  its  ordinary 
duty  of  supplying  the  working  classes  with  better  securities 
for  the  essentials  of  all  humane  living,  how  can  there  be  any 


Introductory.  15 

rational  and  intelligible  use  of  the  word  at  all  ?  Mill  holds 
a  more  or  less  socialistic  idea  of  what  a  just  society  would 
be  ;  Bismarck  holds  a  more  or  less  socialistic  view  of  the 
functions  of  the  State ;  but  neither  of  these  ideas  separately 
make  up  the  minimum  of  socialism  ;  and  it  would  therefore 
be  misleading  to  call  either  of  them  by  that  name,  while  to 
call  both  by  it  would  be  hopeless  confusion,  since  the  one 
politician  holds  exactly  what  the  other  rejects,  and  no  more. 
But,  after  all,  it  is  of  less  importance  to  define  socialism  in  the 
abstract  than  to  describe  the  actual  concrete  socialism  that 
has  organization  and  life,  especially  as  the  name  is  only  trans- 
ferred in  common  speech  to  all  these  varying  shades  of  opinion, 
because  they  are  thought  to  resemble  that  concrete  socialism 
in  one  feature  or  another. 

Having  now  ascertained  the  general  nature  of  the  con- 
temporary socialistic  movement,  we  shall  be  in  a  better  position 
to  judge  of  its  bearings  and  importance.  We  have  seen  that 
the  only  form  of  socialism  which  has  come  to  life  again  since 
1848  is  the  political  and  revolutionary  phase  of  Social  Demo- 
cracy. Now,  this  was  also  the  original  form  in  which  socialism 
first  appeared  in  modem  Europe  at  the  time  of  the  earlier 
Revolution  of  1789.  The  tradition  it  represents  is  conse- 
quently one  of  apparently  vigorous  vitality.  It  has  kept  its 
place  in  European  opinion  for  a  hundred  years,  it  seems  to 
have  grown  with  the  growth  of  the  democratic  spirit,  and  it 
has  in  our  own  day  broken  out  simultaneously  in  most  of  the 
countries  of  the  Continent,  and  in  some  of  them  with  remark- 
able energy.  A  movement  like  this,  which  seems  to  have 
taken  a  continuous  and  extensive  hold  of  the  popular  mind, 
and  which  moreover  has  a  consciousness  of  right,  a  passion  for 
social  justice,  however  mistaken,  at  the  heart  of  it,  cannot  be 
treated  lightly  as  a  poHtical  force ;  but  at  the  same  time  its 
consequence  is  apt  to  be  greatly  overrated  both  by  the  hopes 
of  sanguine  adherents  and  by  the  apprehensions  of  opponents. 
Socialists  are  incessantly  telling  us  that  their  system  is  the 
last  word  of  the  Revolution,  that  the  current  which  broke 
loose  over  Europe  in  1789  is  setting,  as  it  could  not  help  setting, 
in  their  direction,  and  that  it  can  only  find  its  final  level  of 


1 6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

repose  in  a  democratic  communism.  Conservative  Cassandras 
tell  us  the  same  thing,  for  the  Extreme  Right  takes  the  same 
view  as  the  Extreme  Left  does  of  the  logical  tendency  of 
measures.  They  feel  things  about  them  moving  everywhere 
towards  equality,  they  feel  themselves  helpless  to  resist  the 
movement,  and  they  are  sure  they  shall  waken  one  morning 
in  a  social  revolution.  Stahl,  for  example,  thought  democracy 
necessarily  conducted  to  socialism,  and  that  wherever  demo- 
cracy entered,  socialism  was  already  at  the  door.  A  few  words 
will  therefore  be  still  necessary  towards  explaining,  first,  the 
historical  origin  of  modern  socialism  ;  second,  the  relations  of 
socialism  to  democracy,  and,  finally,  the  extent  and  character 
of  the  spread  of  the  present  movement. 

Respecting  the  first  of  these  three  points,  modern  socialism 
was  generated  out  of  the  notions  about  property  and  the  State 
which  appeared  towards  the  close  of  last  century  in  the  course 
of  the  speculations  then  in  vogue  on  the  origin  and  objects  of 
civil  society,  and  which  were  proclaimed  about  the  same  time 
by  many  different  writers — by  Brissot,  by  Mably,  by  Morelly, 
and  above  all  by  Rousseau.  Their  great  idea  was  to  restore 
what  they  called  the  state  of  nature,  when  primitive  equality 
still  reigned,  and  the  earth  belonged  to  none,  and  the  fruits 
to  all.  They  taught  that  there  was  no  foundation  for  property 
but  need.  He  who  needed  a  thing  had  a  right  to  it,  and  he 
who  had  more  than  he  needed  was  a  thief.  Rousseau  said 
every  man  had  naturally  a  right  to  whatever  he  needed  ;  and 
Brissot,  anticipating  the  famous  words  of  Proudhon,  declared 
that  in  a  state  of  nature  "  exclusive  property  was  theft."  It 
was  so  in  a  state  of  nature,  but  it  was  so  also  in  a  state  of 
society,  for  society  was  buUt  on  a  social  contract,  "  the  clauses 
of  which  reduce  themselves  to  one,  viz.,  the  total  transfer  of 
each  associate,  with  all  his  rights,  to  the  community."  The 
individual  is  thus  nothing ;  the  State  is  all  in  all.  Property  is 
only  so  much  of  the  national  estate  conditionally  conceded  to 
the  individual.  He  has  the  right  to  use  it,  because  the  State 
permits  him,  while  the  State  permits  him,  and  how  the  State 
permits  him.  So  with  every  other  right ;  he  is  to  think,  speak, 
train  his  children,  or  even  beget  them,  as  the  State  directs  and 
allows,  in  the  interest  of  ths  common  gocd. 


Introductory.  1 7 

These  ideas  circulated  in  a  di£fuse  state  till  1793.  They 
formed  as  yet  neither  system  nor  party.  But  when  Joseph 
Baboeuf,  discarding  his  Christian  name  of  Joseph  (because,  as 
he  said,  he  had  no  wish  for  Joseph's  virtues,  and  so  saw  no 
good  in  having  him  for  his  patron  saint),  and  taking  instead 
the  ominous  name  of  Caius  Gracchus,  organized  the  conspiracy 
of  the  Egaux  in  that  year,  then  modern  socialism  began,  and 
it  began  in  the  form  in  which  it  still  survives.  Baboeuf  s 
ambition  was  to  found  what  he  called  a  true  democratic 
republic,  and  by  a  true  democratic  republic  he  meant  one  in 
which  all  inequalities,  whether  of  right  or  of  fact,  should  be 
abolished,  and  every  citizen  should  have  enough  and  none  too 
much.  It  was  vain,  he  held,  to  dream  of  making  an  end  of 
privilege  or  oppression  until  all  property  came  into  the  hands 
of  the  Government,  and  was  statedly  distributed  by  the 
Government  to  the  citizens  on  a  principle  of  scrupulous 
equality.  Misled  by  the  name  Caius  Gracchus,  people  thought 
he  wanted  an  agrarian  law  and  equal  division.  But  he  told 
them  an  agrarian  law  was  folly,  and  equal  division  would  not 
last  a  twelvemonth,  if  the  participants  got  the  property  to 
themselves.  What  he  wanted,  he  said,  was  something  much 
more  sublime — it  was  community  of  goods.  Equality  could 
only  be  made  enduring  through  the  abolition  of  private 
property.  The  State  must  be  sole  proprietor  and  sole  em- 
ployer, and  dispense  to  every  man  his  work  according  to  his 
particular  skill,  and  his  subsistence  in  honourable  sufficiency 
according  to  his  wants.  An  individual  who  monopolized  any- 
thing over  and  above  such  a  sufficiency  committed  a  social 
theft.  Appropriation  was  to  be  strictly  limited  to  and  by 
personal  need. 

Baboeuf  saw  no  difficulty  in  working  the  scheme ;  was  it 
not  practised  every  day  in  the  army,  with  1,200,000  men?  If 
it  were  said,  the  soil  of  France  is  too  small  to  sustain  its 
population  in  the  standard  of  sufficiency  contemplated,  then 
so  much  the  worse  for  the  superfluous  population ;  let  the 
greater  landlords  first,  and  then  as  many  sansculottes  as  were 
redundant,  be  put  out  of  the  way  for  their  country's  good.  He 
actually  ascribed  this  intention  to  Robespierre,  and  spoke  of 
the  Terror  as  if  it  were  an  excellent  anticipation  of  Malthusi- 

c 


1 8  Contemporary  Socialism. 

anism.  Did  any  one  say  that,  without  inequalities,  progress 
would  cease  and  arts  and  civilization  decay,  Baboeiif  was 
equally  prepared  to  take  the  consequences.  "  Perish  the  arts," 
said  a  manifesto  discovered  with  him  at  his  apprehension,  "  but 
let  us  have  real  equality."  "  All  evils,"  he  said  in  his  news- 
paper, "  are  on  their  trial.  Let  them  all  be  confounded.  Let 
everything  return  to  chaos,  and  from  chaos  let  there  rise  a 
new  and  regenerated  world." 

We  have  here  just  the  revolutionary  socialist  democracy 
that  is  still  rampant  over  Europe,  Socialists  now,  indeed, 
generally  make  light  of  the  difficulty  of  over-population  which 
Baboeuf  solved  so  glibly  with  the  guillotine,  and  they  contend 
that  their  system  would  humanize  civilization  instead  of 
destroying  it.  They  follow,  too,  a  different  tradition  from 
Baboeuf  regarding  the  right  of  property.  While  he  built  that 
right  on  need,  they  build  it  on  labour.  He  said  the  man  who 
has  more  than  he  needs  is  a  thief ;  they  say  the  man  who  has 
more  tlian  he  wrought  for  is  a  thief.  He  would  have  the  State 
to  give  every  man  an  honourable  sufficiency  right  off,  accord- 
ing to  his  need  ;  they  ask  the  State  to  give  every  man  accord- 
ing to  his  work,  or,  if  unfit  for  work,  according  to  his  need, 
and  they  hold  that  this  rule  would  afford  every  one  an  honour- 
able sufficiency.  But  these  differences  are  only  refinements 
on  Baboeuf's  plan,  and  its  main  features  remain — equality  of 
conditions,  nationalization  of  property,  democratic  tyranny,  a 
uniform  medium  fatal  to  progress,  an  omnipresent  mandarin 
control  crushing  out  of  the  people  that  energy  of  character 
which  W.  von  Humboldt  said  was  the  first  and  only  virtue 
of  man,  because  it  was  the  root  of  all  other  excellence  and 
advancement.  In  short,  socialists  now  seek,  like  Baboeuf,  to 
establish  a  democratic  republic — a  societj-  built  on  the  equal 
manhood  of  every  citizen — and,  like  Baboeuf,  they  think  a 
true  democratic  republic  is  necessarily  a  socialistic  one. 

This  brings  me  to  the  next  point  I  mentioned,  Ihe  interest- 
ing problem  of  the  true  relations  of  socialism  to  democracy. 
Is  socialism,  as  Stahl  and  others  represent,  an  inevitable 
corollarj''  of  democracy  ?  If  so,  our  interest  in  it  is  very  real 
and  very  immediate.     For  democracy  is  already  here,  and  is  at 


Introductory.  19 

present  engaged  in  every  country  of  Europe  in  the  very  work 
of  reorganizing  the  social  system  into  harmony  with  demo- 
cratic requirements.  Its  hammer  may  make  little  sound  in 
some  places,  but  the  work  proceeds  none  the  less  effectually 
for  the  silence,  and  it  will  proceed,  slowly  or  more  rapidly, 
until  all  the  institutions  of  the  country  have  been  renovated 
by  the  democratic  spirit.  "Will  the  social  system,  which  will 
result  from  the  process,  be  socialism  ?  "  The  gradual  develop- 
ment of  the  principle  of  equality,"  says  De  Tocqueville,  "  is  a 
providential  fact.  It  has  all  the  characteristics  of  such  a  fact. 
It  is  universal ;  it  is  durable ;  it  constantly  eludes  all  human 
interference ;  and  all  events,  as  well  as  all  men,  contribute  to 
its  progress.  Would  it  be  wise  to  imagine  that  a  social  move- 
ment, the  causes  of  which  lie  so  far  back,  can  be  checked  by 
the  efforts  of  one  generation  ?  Can  it  be  believed  that  the 
democracy  which  has  overthrown  the  feudal  system  and 
vanquished  kings  will  retreat  before  tradesmen  and  capitaUsts? 
Will  it  stop  now  that  it  has  grown  so  strong,  and  its  adver- 
saries so  weak?  "  If,  then,  the  natural  tendency  of  democracy 
is  to  socialism,  to  socialism  we  must  eventually  go. 

But  the  natural  tendency  of  democracy  is  not  to  socialism. 
A  single  plain  but  remarkable  fact  suffices  to  establish  that. 
Democracy  has  been  in  full  bloom  in  America  for  more  than 
a  century,  and  there  are  no  traces  of  socialism  .there  except 
among  some  German  immigrants  of  yesterday ;  for,  of  course, 
the  communism  of  the  eccentric  religious  sects  of  America 
proceeds  from  religious  ideals,  and  has  no  bearing  one  way 
or  other  on  the  social  tendency  of  democracy.  The  labouring 
class  is  politically  everything  in  that  country — everything,  at 
least,  that  electoral  power  can  make  them  in  an  elective  re- 
public ;  and  they  have  never  shown  any  desire  to  use  their 
political  power  to  become  socially  everything  or  to  interfere 
with  the  freedom  of  property.  Had  this  been  in  any  way  the 
necessary  effect  of  democratic  institutions,  it  must  have  by 
this  time  made  its  appearance  in  the  United  States.  De 
Tocqueville,  indeed,  maintains  that  so  far  from  there  being 
any  natural  solidarity  between  democracy  and  socialism,  they 
are  absolutely  contrary  the  one  to  the  other.  "  Democracy," 
he  said  in  a  speech  in  the  Republican  Parliament  of  France 


20  Contemporary  Socialism, 

in  1849,  "  extends  the  sphere  of  individual  independence ; 
socialism  contracts  it.  Democracy  gives  every  individual  man 
his  utmost  possible  value ;  socialism  makes  every  man  an  agent, 
an  instrument,  a  cipher.  Democracy  and  socialism  coincide 
only  in  the  single  word  equality,  but  observe  the  difference : 
democracy  desires  equality  in  liberty;  socialism  seeks  equality 
in  compulsion  and  servitude." 

That  is  so  far  substantially  true,  but  it  cannot  be  received 
altogether  without  qualification.  "We  have  had  experience  in 
modem  times  of  two  diiferent  forms  of  democracy,  which  may 
be  called  the  American  and  the  Continental.  In  America 
equality  came  as  it  were  by  nature,  without  strife  and  without 
so  much  as  observation ;  the  colonists  started  equal.  But 
freedom  was  only  won  by  sacrifice ;  the  first  pilgrims  bought 
it  by  exile ;  the  founders  of  the  RepubUc  bought  it  a  second 
time  by  blood.  Liberty  therefore  was  their  treasure,  their 
ark,  their  passion ;  and  having  been  long  trained  in  habits  of 
self-government,  they  acquired  in  the  daily  exercise  of  their 
liberty  that  strong  sense  of  its  practical  value,  and  that  subtle 
instinct  of  its  just  limits,  which  always  constitute  its  surest 
bulwarlis.  With  them"  the  State  was  nothing  more  than  an 
association  for  mutual  protection — an  association,  like  any 
other,  having  its  own  definite  work  to  do  and  no  more,  and 
receiving  from  its  members  the  precise  powers  needed  for  that 
work  and  no  more ;  and  they  looked  with  a  jealousy,  warm 
from  their  history  and  life,  on  any  extension  of  the  State's 
functions  or  powers  beyond  those  primary  requirements  of 
public  safety  or  utility  which  they  laid  upon  it.  In  the  United 
States  property  is  widely  diffused  ;  liberty  has  been  long 
enjoyed  by  the  people  as  a  fact,  as  well  as  loved  by  them  as 
an  ideal ;  the  central  authority  has  ever  been  held  in  com- 
parative check ;  and  individual  rights  are  so  general  a  posses- 
sion that  any  encroachment  upon  them  in  the  name  of  the 
majority  would  always  tread  on  interests  numerous  and  strong 
enough  to  raise  an  effectual  resistance.  Democracy  has  in 
America,  accordingly,  a  soil  most  favourable  to  its  healthy 
growth ;  the  history,  the  training,  and  the  circumstances  of 
the  people  all  concur  to  support  liberty. 

But  on  the  Continent  democracy  sprang  from  very  different 


Introductory.  2 1 

antecedents,  and  possesses  a  very  different  character.  Equality 
was  introduced  into  France  by  convulsion,  and  has  engrossed 
an  undue  share  of  her  attention  since.  Freedom,  on  the  other 
hand,  has  been  really  less  desired  than  power.  The  Revolution 
found  the  affairs  of  that  country  administered  by  a  strong 
centralized  organization,  with  its  hand  everywhere  and  on 
everything,  and  the  Revolution  left  them  so.  Revolution  has 
succeeded  revolution ;  djmasties  and  constitutions  have  come 
and  gone ;  almost  every  part  of  the  political  and  social  system 
has  suffered  change ;  the  form  of  government  has  been  re- 
public, empire,  monarchy,  empire  and  repubhc  again ;  but 
the  authority  of  government,  its  sphere,  its  attributes,  have 
remained  throughout  the  same.  Each  party  in  succession  has 
seized  the  power  of  the  State,  but  none  has  sought  to  curb  its 
range.  On  the  contrary,  their  temptation  lay  the  other  way  ; 
they  have  been  always  so  bent  on  using  the  authority  and 
mechanism  of  government  to  impair  or  suppress  the  influence 
of  their  adversaries,  whom  they  regarded  as  at  the  same  time 
the  adversaries  of  the  State,  that  they  could  only  wish  that 
authority  to  be  larger  and  that  mechanism  more  perfect  than 
they  already  were.  Even  the  more  popular  parties  are  content 
to  accept  the  existing  over-government  as  the  normal  state 
of  affairs,  and  always  strive  to  gain  the  control  of  it  rather 
than  to  restrain  its  action.  And  so  it  has  come  about  that, 
while  they  sought  liberty  for  themselves,  they  were  afraid 
to  grant  it  to  their  opponents,  for  fear  their  opponents  should 
be  able  to  get  the  authority  of  this  too  powerful  administration 
into  their  hands  and  serve  them  in  the  same  way.  The 
struggle  for  freedom  has  thus  been  corrupted  into  a  struggle 
for  power.  That  is  the  secret  of  the  pathetic  story  of  modern 
France.  That  is  why,  with  all  her  marvellous  efforts  for 
liberty-,  she  has  never  fully  possessed  it,  and  that  is  why  she 
seems  condemned  to  instability. 

A  growing  minority  of  the  democratic  party  in  France  is 
indeed  opposed  to  this  unfortunate  over-government,  but  the 
democratic  party  in  general  has  always  countenanced  it, 
perhaps  more  than  any  other  partj",  because  to  their  minds 
government  represents  the  will  of  the  people,  and  the  people 
cannot  be  supposed  to  have  any  reason  to  restrain  its  own 


22  Co7itemporary  Socialism. 

■will.  Besides,  they  are  still  dominated  by  the  doctrines  of 
Rousseau  and  the  other  revolutionary  writers  who  looked  with 
the  utmost  contempt  on  the  American  idea  of  the  State  being 
a  kind  of  joint-stock  association  organized  for  a  circumscribed 
purpose  and  with  limited  powers,  and  who  held  the  State,  on 
the  contrary,  to  be  the  organ  of  society  in  all  its  interests, 
desires,  and  needs,  and  to  be  invested  with  all  the  powers  and 
rights  of  all  the  individuals  that  compose  it.  Under  the  social 
contract,  by  which  they  conceived  the  State  to  be  constituted, 
individuals  gave  up  all  their  rights  and  possessions  to  the 
community,  and  got  them  back  immediately  afterwards  as 
mere  State  concessions,  which  there  could  be  no  injustice  in 
withdrawing  again  next  day  for  the  greater  good  of  the  com- 
munity. Instead  of  enjoying  equal  freedom  as  men,  the  great 
object  was  to  make  them  enjoy  equal  completeness  as  citizens. 

From  historical  conditions  like  these  there  has  sprung  up 
on  the  Continent — in  Germany  as  weU  as  France — a  quite 
different  type  of  democracy  from  the  American,  and  this  type 
of  democracy,  while  it  may  not  be  the  best,  the  truest,  or  the 
healthiest  type  of  it,  has  a  tendency  only  too  natural  towards 
socialism.  It  contains  in  its  very  build  and  temperament 
organic  conditions  that  predispose  it  to  socialism  as  to  its 
peculiarly  besetting  disease.  It  evinced  this  tendency  very 
early  in  the  history  of  the  Revolution.  As  Ledru-Rollin  re- 
minded De  Tocqueville,  in  replying  to  his  speech,  the  right  to 
labour  on  the  part  of  the  strong  and  the  right  to  assistance 
on  the  part  of  the  weak  were  already  acknowledged  by  the 
Convention  of  1793.  Claims  like  these  constitute  the  very 
A  B  C  of  socialism,  and  they  have  always  moved  with  more 
or  less  energy  in  the  democratic  tradition  of  the  Continent. 
Democracy,  guided  by  the  spirit  of  freedom,  will  resist 
socialism ;  but  authoritative  democracy,  such  as  finds  favour 
abroad,  leans  strongly  towards  it.  A  democratic  despotism 
is  obviously  more  dangerous  to  property  than  any  other, 
inasmuch  as  the  despot  is,  in  this  case,  more  insatiable,  and 
his  rapacity  is  so  easily  hid  and  even  sanctified  under  the 
general  considerations  of  humanity  that  always  mingle  with 
it. 

It  is  therefore  manifest,  that  the  question  whether  political 


Introductory.  23 

democracy  must  end  in  social,  is  one  that  cannot  be  answered 
out  of  hand  by  deduction  from  the  idea.  The  development 
will  differ  in  different  countries,  for  it  depends  on  historical 
conditions,  of  which  the  most  important  is  that  I  have  now 
touched  on,  whether  the  national  character  and  circumstances 
are  calculated  to  guide  that  development  into  the  form  of 
democratic  liberty,  or  into  the  form  of  democratic  tyranny.  A 
second  condition  is  scarcely  less  important,  viz.,  whether  the 
laws  and  economic  situation  of  the  country  have  conduced 
to  a  dispersion  or  to  a  concentration  of  property.  For  even 
in  the  freest  democracy  individual  property  can  only  be  per- 
manently sustained  by  diffusion,  and,  if  existing  conditions 
have  isolated  it  into  the  hands  of  the  few,  the  many  will  lie 
under  a  constant,  and,  in  emergencies,  an  irresistible  tempta- 
tion to  take  freedom  in  their  hand  and  force  the  distribution 
of  property  by  law,  or  nationalize  it  entirely  by  a  socialistic 
reconstruction.  It  used  to  be  a  maxim  in  former  days  that 
power  must  be  distributed  in  some  proportion  to  property,  but 
with  the  advent  of  democracy  the  maxim  must  be  converted, 
and  the  rule  of  health  will  now  be  found  in  having  property 
distributed  in  some  proportion  to  power.  That  is  the  natural 
price  of  stability  under  a  democratic  regime.  A  penniless 
omnipotence  is  an  insupportable  presence.  When  supreme 
power  is  vested  in  a  majority  of  the  people,  property  cannot 
sit  securely  till  it  becomes  so  general  a  possession  that  a 
majority  of  the  people  has  a  stake  in  its  defence,  and  this 
point  will  not  be  reached  until  at  least  a  large  minority  of 
them  are  actually  owners,  and  the  rest  enjoy  a  reasonable 
prospect  of  becoming  so  by  the  exercise  of  care  and  diligence 
in  their  ordinary  avocations. 

The  belief  of  Marx  and  modem  socialists,  that  the  large 
system  of  production,  with  its  centralized  capital  and  its  ag- 
gregation of  workpeople  in  large  centres,  must,  by  necessary 
historical  evolution,  end  in  the  socialist  State,  is,  as  Professor  A. 
Menger  has  pointed  out,  not  justified  by  history.  The  lati- 
fundia  and  slavery  of  the  decline  of  the  Roman  empire  were 
not  succeeded  by  any  system  of  common  property,  but  by  the 
institutions  of  mediaeval  law  which  made  the  rights  of  private 
property  more  absolute  and  exclusive.     And  in  our  own  time 


24  Conte7nporary  Socialism. 

the  tendency  to  concentration  of  property  in  tlie  hands  of  a  few 
great  capitalists  is  being  corrected  by  the  newer  tendency  to 
joint  stock  management,  i.e.,  to  the  union  and  multiplication 
of  small  capitalists ;  and  this  is  of  course  a  tendency  back 
from,  and  not  on  towards,  the  social  revolution  Marx  con- 
ceived to  be  imminent.  But  though  the  modern  concentra- 
tion of  wealth  may  not  for  the  moment  be  increasing,  and  if 
it  were,  may  not  on  that  account  necessarily  spell  socialism, 
it  certainly  spells  social  peril;  and  the  future,  therefore, 
stands  before  us  with  a  solemn  choice :  either  property  must 
contrive  to  get  widely  diffused  peacefully,  or  it  will  be  diffused 
by  acts  of  popular  confiscation,  or  perhaps  be  nationalized 
altogether ;  and  the  fate  of  free  institutions  hangs  up(^  the 
dilemma.  For  in  a  democratic  community  the  peril  is  always 
near.  De  Tocqueville  may  be  right  in  saying  that  such 
communities,  if  left  to  themselves,  naturally  love  liberty; 
but  there  are  other  things  they  love  more,  and  this  pro- 
found political  philosopher  has  himself  pointed  out  with  what 
exceptional  vigour  they  nourish  two  powerful  passions,  either 
of  which,  if  it  got  the  mastery,  would  prove  fatal  to  free- 
dom. One  is  the  love  of  equality.  "  I  think,"  says  he,  "  that 
democratic  communities  have  a  natural  taste  for  freedom ;  left 
to  themselves  they  will  seek  to  cherish  it,  and  view  every  pri- 
vation of  it  with  regret.  But  for  equality  their  passion  is 
ardent,  insatiable,  insistent,  invincible  ;  they  call  for  equality 
in  freedom,  and  if  they  cannot  obtain  that,  they  still  call  for 
equality  in  slavery.  They  will  endure  poverty,  servitude, 
pauperism,  but  they  will  not  endure  aristocracy."  The  other 
is  the  unreined  love  of  material  gratification.  By  this  De 
Tocqueville  does  not  mean  sensual  corruption  of  manners,  for 
he  believes  that  sensuality  will  be  more  moderate  in  a  demo- 
cracy than  in  other  forms  of  society.  He  means  the  passion 
for  material  comfort  above  all  other  things,  which  he  describes 
as  the  peculiar  passion  of  the  middle  classes ;  the  complete 
absorption  in  the  pursuit  of  material  well-being  and  the  means 
of  material  well-being,  to  the  disparagement  and  disregard  of 
every  ideal  consideration  and  interest,  as  if  the  chief  end  and 
whole  dignity  of  man  lay  in  gaining  a  conventional  standard 
of  comfort.     "When  a  passion  like  this  spreads  from  the  classes 


Introductory.  25 

whose  vanity  it  feeds  to  the  classes  whose  envy  it  excites, 
social  revolution  is  at  the  gates,  and  this  is  one  of  De  Tocque- 
ville's  gravest  apprehensions  in  contemplating  the  advance  of 
democracy.  For  he  says  that  the  passion  for  material  well- 
being  has  no  check  in  a  democratic  community  except  religion, 
and  if  religion  were  to  decline — and  the  pursuit  of  comfort 
undoubtedly  impairs  it — then  Uberty  would  perish.  "  For  my 
part,"  he  declares,  "  I  doubt  whether  man  can  ever  support  at 
once  complete  religious  independence  and  entire  public  free- 
dom ;  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  if  faith  be  wanting  in 
him  he  must  serve,  and  if  he  be  free  he  must  believe."  It  is 
impossible,  therefore,  in  an  age  when  the  democratic  spirit  has 
grown  so  strong  and  victorious,  to  avoid  taking  some  reason- 
able concern  for  the  future  of  liberty,  more  especially  as  at  the 
same  time  the  sphere  and  power  of  government  are  being 
everywhere  continually  extended,  the  devotion  to  material 
well-being,  and  what  is  called  material  civilization,  is  ever 
increasing,  and  religious  faith,  particularly  among  the  edu- 
cated and  the  working  classes,  is  on  the  decline. 

This  is  exactly  the  rock  ahead  of  the  modern  State,  of  which 
we  have  been  long  warned  by  keen  eyes  aloft,  and  which  seems 
now  to  stand  out  plainly  enough  to  ordinary  observers  on  the 
deck.  Free  institutions  run  continual  risk  of  shipwreck  when 
power  is  the  possession  of  the  many,  but  property — from  what- 
ever cause — the  enjoyment  of  the  few.  With  the  advance  of 
democracy  a  diffusion  of  wealth  becomes  almost  a  necessity  of 
State,  And  the  difficulty  only  begins  when  the  necessity  is 
perceived.  For  the  State  cannot  accomplish  any  lasting  or 
effective  change  in'  the  matter  without  impairing  or  imperilling 
the  freedom  which  its  intervention  is  meant  to  protect — with- 
out, in  short,  becoming  socialist,  for  fear  of  socialism;  and 
when  it  has  done  its  best,  it  finds  that  the  solution  is  still  sub- 
ject to  moral  and  economic  conditions  which  it  has  no  power 
to  control.  In  trade  and  manufactures  which  occupy  such 
vast  and  increasing  proportions  of  the  population  of  modern 
countries,  the  range  of  the  State's  beneficial  or  even  possible 
action  is  very  little ;  and  ia  these  branches  the  natural  con- 
ditions at  present  strongly  favour  concentration  or  aggregation 
of  capital.     The  small  masters  have  simply  been  worsted  in 


26  Contemporary  Socialism. 

ordinary  competition  with  the  large  producers,  and  so  long  as 
the  large  system  of  production  continues  the  cheapest  system 
of  production,  no  other  result  can  be  expected.  The  social 
problem,  therefore,  so  far  as  these  branches  are  concerned,  is  to 
discover  some  form  of  co-operative  arrangement  which  shall 
reconcile  the  large  system  of  production  with  the  interests  of 
the  labouring  class,  unless,  indeed — what  is  far  from  impossible 
— the  large  system  of  production  is  itself  to  be  superseded  in 
the  further  advance  of  industrial  development.  The  economic 
superiority  of  that  system  depends  greatly  on  the  cii'cum- 
stance  that  the  power  now  in  use — water  or  steam — necessi- 
tates the  concentration  of  machinery  at  one  spot.  Mr,  Babbage 
predicted  fifty  years  ago  that  if  a  new  power  were  to  be  dis- 
covered that  could  be  generated  in  a  central  place  in  quantities 
sufficient  for  the  requirements  of  a  whole  community,  and 
then  distributed,  as  gas  is,  wherever  it  was  wanted,  the  age  of 
domestic  manufactures  would  return.  Every  little  community 
might  then  find  it  cheaper,  by  saving  carriage,  and  availing 
itself  of  cheaper  local  labour,  to  manufacture  for  itself  many 
of  the  articles  now  made  for  it  at  the  large  mills;  and  the 
small  factory  or  workshop,  so  suitable,  among  other  advantages, 
for  co-operative  enterprise,  would  multiply  everywhere.  Now, 
have  we  such  a  power  in  electricity  ?  If  so,  not  the  least  im- 
portant efiect  of  the  new  agent  will  be  its  influence  on  the 
diffusion  of  wealth,  and  its  aid  towards  the  solution  of  the 
social  problem  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

With  land  and  agriculture  the  situation  is  somewhat  differ- 
ent. The  distribution  of  landed  property  has  always  depended 
largely  on  legal  conditions ;  and  since  these  conditions  have — 
in  this  country  at  least — wrought  for  two  centuries  in  favour 
of  the  aggregation  of  estates,  their  relaxation  may  reasonably 
be  expected  to  operate  to  some  extent  in  the  contrary  direc- 
tion. Too  much  must  not  be  built  on  this  expectation,  how- 
ever, for  the  natural  conditions  are  at  present,  at  least,  as  partial 
to  the  large  property  as  the  legal.  The  abolition  of  entail  and 
primogeniture,  by  emancipating  the  living  proprietor  from  the 
preposterous  tyranny  of  the  dead,  and  by  bringing  to  the 
burdened  the  privilege  of  sale,  must  necessarily  throw  greater 
quantities  of  land  into  the  market  than  reach  it  now,  but  the 


Introductory.  27 

redistribution  of  that  laud  will  as  necessarily  conform  to  the 
existing  social  and  economic  circumstances  of  the  country ; 
and  England  will  never  cease  to  be  characterized  by  the  large 
property,  so  long  as  its  social  system  lends  exceptional  consider- 
ation to  the  possession  of  land,  and  its  commercial  system  is 
continually  creating  an  exceptional  number  of  large  fortunes. 
The  market  for  the  large  estate  is  among  the  wealthy,  who 
buy  land  as  an  instrument  of  enjoyment,  of  power,  of  social 
ambition;  and  what  with  the  wealth  made  at  home  and  the 
wealth  made  in  the  colonies,  the  number  of  tliis  class  is  ever 
on  the  increase ;  the  natural  market  for  the  small  estate,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  among  the  farming  class,  to  whom  land  is 
a  commercial  investment,  and  the  farmers  of  England,  unlike 
those  of  other  countries,  unlike  those  of  our  own  country  in 
former  days,  are  as  a  rule  positively  indisposed  to  purchase 
land,  finding  it  more  profitable  to  rent  it.  This  aversion,  how- 
ever, is  much  more  influential  with  large  farmers  than  with 
small  ones.  It  is  commonly  argued  as  if  a  small  farmer  who 
has  saved  money  will  be  certain  to  employ  it  in  taking  a  more 
extensive  holding,  but  that  is  not  so.  On  the  contrary,  he  more 
usually  leaves  it  in  the  bank  ;  in  some  parts  of  Scotland  many 
small  farmers  have  deposits  of  from  £500  to  £1000  lying  there 
at  interest ;  they  studiously  conceal  the  fact,  lest  their  landlords 
should  hear  of  it,  and  raise  their  rent,  and  thej'^  submit  to  much 
inconvenience  rather  than  withdraw  any  portion  of  it,  once  it 
is  deposited.  Their  ruling  object  is  security  and  not  aggran- 
disement, and  consequently  if  land  were  in  the  market  in  lots 
to  suit  them,  they  would  be  almost  certain  to  become  pur- 
chasers of  land.  In  forecasting  the  possibility  of  the  rise  of  a 
peasant  proprietary  in  this  country,  it  is  often  forgotten  that, 
whether  land  is  a  profitable  investment  for  the  farmer  or  not, 
the  class  of  farmers  from  whom  such  a  proprietary  would  be 
generated  is  less  anxious  for  a  profitable  investment  than  for  a 
safe  one,  and  that  to  many  of  them,  as  of  other  classes,  inde- 
pendence will  always  possess  much  more  than  a  commercial 
value. 

But,  however  this  may  be,  land  is  distributed  by  holdings  as 
well  as  by  estates,  and  in  connection  with  our  present  subject 
the  distribution  by  holdings  is  perhaps  the  more  important 


28  Contemporary  Socialism. 

thing  of  the  two.  "The  magic  of  property  "  is  no  exclusive 
prerogative  of  the  soil ;  ownership  in  stock  will  carry  the  same 
political  effects  as  ownership  in  anything  else ;  and  a  satisfac- 
tory system  of  tenant  right  may  yield  all  the  social  and  eco- 
nomic advantages  of  a  peasant  proprietary.  In  fact,  tenant 
right,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  proprietorship,  and  it  has  before  now 
developed  into  proprietorship  even  in  name.  The  old  lamented 
3'eomanry  of  England  were,  the  great  majority  of  them,  copy- 
holders, and  a  copyholder  was  simply  a  tenant-at-will  whose 
tenant  right  was  consolidated  by  custom  into  a  perpetual 
and  hereditary  property;  and  if  the  soil  of  England  will 
ever  again  become  distributed  among  as  numerous  a  body  of 
owners  as  held  it  in  former  ages,  it  will  most  likely  occur 
through  a  similar  process  of  consolidation  of  tenant  right.  But 
as  it  is — and  though  this  is  a  truism,  it  is  often  overlooked  in 
discussions  on  the  subject — the  tenants  are  owners  as  well  as 
the  landlords ;  their  interests  enlist  them  on  the  side  of  sta- 
bility' ;  they  have  a  stake  in  the  defence  of  property  ;  and  even 
though  the  prevailing  tendency  to  the  accumulation  of  estates 
continues  unchecked,  its  peril  to  the  State  may  be  mitigated 
by  the  preservation  and  multiplication  of  small  and  comfort- 
able holdings,  which  shall  nourish  a  substantial  and  indepen- 
dent peasantry,  and  supply  a  hope  and  ambition  to  the  rural 
labourers.  This  is  so  far  well.  We  know  that  it  is  an  axiom 
with  Continental  socialists  that  a  revolution  has  no  chance 
of  success,  however  well  supported  it  may  be  by  the  artisans 
of  the  towns,  if  the  peasantry  are  contented  and  take  no  part 
in  it ;  and  the  most  serious  feature  in  more  than  one  of  the 
great  countries  of  Europe  at  this  moment  is  the  miserable 
condition  into  which  their  agricultural  labourers  have  been 
suffered  to  fall,  and  their  practical  exclusion  from  all  oppor- 
tunities of  raising  themselves  out  of  it.  The  stability  of 
Europe  may  be  said  to  rest  on  the  number  of  its  comfortable 
peasantry  ;  the  dam  of  the  Revolution  is  the  small  farm.  This 
is  not  less  true  of  England  than  of  the  Continent,  for  although 
the  agricultural  population  is  vastly  outnumbered  by  the 
industrial  in  this  country,  that  consideration  really  increases 
rather  than  diminishes  the  political  value  of  sustaining  and 
multiplying  a  contented  tenantry. 


Introductory.  29 

Now  England  is  the  classical  country  of  the  large  farm  as 
well  as  of  the  large  estate.  Its  holdings  have  always  been 
larger  than  those  of  other  nations ;  they  were  so  when  half  of 
them  were  owned  by  their  occupiers,  they  are  so  still  when 
they  are  rented  from  great  landlords.  The  large  farms  have 
grown  Ip.rger ;  a  holding  of  200  acres  was  counted  a  very  large 
farm  in  the  time  of  the  Commonwealth ;  it  would  be  considered 
a  very  moderate  one  in  most  English  counties  now.  But  yet 
the  small  farm  has  not  gone  the  way  of  the  small  estate.  The 
effects  of  consolidation  have  been  balanced  to  such  a  degree  by 
a  simultaneous  extension  of  the  area  of  cultivation  that  the 
number  of  holdings  in  England  is  probably  more  considerable 
than  it  ever  was  before.  If  we  may  trust  Gregory  King's 
estimate,  there  were,  200  years  ago,  310,000  occupiers  of  hold- 
ings in  England,  160,000  owners,  and  150,000  tenants  p  in 
1880  there  were,  exclusive  of  allotments,  which  are  now 
numerous,  295,313  holdings  of  50  acres  and  under,  and  414,804 
holdings  altogether.  Moreover,  the  future  of  the  small  farm  is 
much  more  hopeful  than  the  future  of  the  small  estate  or  the 
small  factory.  All  admit  the  small  holding  to  be  preferable  to 
the  large  for  dairy  farming  and  market  gardening  ;  and  dairy 
farms  and  market  gardens  are  two  classes  of  holdings  that 
must  continue  to  multiply  with  the  growth  of  the  great  towns. 
But  even  with  respect  to  corn  crops,  it  is  now  coming  to  be 
well  understood  that  the  existing  conditions  of  high  farming 
would  be  better  satisfied  by  a  smaller  size  of  holding  than  has 
been  in  most  favour  with  agricultural  reformers  hitherto  ;  be- 
cause then,  and  then  only,  can  the  farmer  be  expected  to 
bestow  upon  every  rood  of  his  ground  that  generous  expendi- 
ture of  capital,  and  that  sedulous  and  minute  care  which  are 
now  necessary  to  make  his  business  profitable.  Without  en- 
tering on  the  disputed  question  of  the  comparative  productive- 
ness of  large  and  small  farms,  it  ought  to  be  remembered,  in 
the  first  place,  that  the  economic  advantage  of  the  large 
farm — the  reason  why  the  large  farmer  has  been  able  to  offer 
a  higher  rent  than  the  smaller — is  not  so  much  because  he 
produces  more,  as  because  he  can  afford  to  produce  less  ;  and, 
in  the  next  place,  that  the  small  farmer  has  heretofore  wrought, 
not  only  with  worse  appliances  than  the  large — which  perhaps 


3©  Contemporary  Socialism. 

he  must  always  do — but  also  with  less  knowledge  of  the  theory 
of  his  art,  and  worse  conditions  of  tenure — in  both  of  which 
respects  we  may  look  for  improvement  in  the  immediate 
future.  Even  as  it  is,  we  find  small  farmers  equalling  the 
highest  production  of  the  country.  In  the  evidence  before  the 
Duke  of  Richmond's  Commission,  there  is  a  case  of  a  farmer 
of  three  acres  producing  45  bushels  per  acre,  or  about  twice 
the  average  of  the  season  in  those  bad  years  that  impoverished 
the  larger  farmers.  The  same  body  of  evidence  seems  to  prove 
that  the  small  farmer  has  more  staying  power — a  better  capa- 
city of  weathering  an  agricultural  crisis — than  the  large ;  for 
he  has  much  less  frequently  petitioned  for  a  reduction  of  rent 
— an  advantage  which  landlords  may  be  expected  not  to  over- 
look. He  enjoys,  too,  a  monopoly  of  the  superior  efficiency  of 
interested  labour,  and  as  the  personal  efficiency  of  the  labourer 
— his  skill,  his  knowledge,  his  watchfulness,  his  care — are  be- 
coming not  less,  but  more  important  with  the  growth  of 
scientific  farming,  whether  in  corn  raising  or  cattle  rearing, 
the  small  farm  system  will  probably  continue  to  hold,  if  not  to 
enlarge,  its  place  in  modem  agriculture  ;  and  if  it  is  able  to  do 
so,  it  will  constitute  one  of  the  best  buttresses  against  the  social 
revolution. 

It  remains  to  mark  the  spread  of  socialism  in  the  various 
countries  of  Europe  and  America,  and  to  describe  its  present 
position ;  but  this  I  shall  reserve  for  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE    PROGRESS    AND    PRESENT   POSITION    OF    SOCIALISM. 

Socialism  being  now  revolutionary  social  democracy,  we 
should  expect  to  find  it  most  widely  and  most  acutely  developed 
in  those  countries  where,  1st,  the  social  condition  of  the  lower 
classes  is  most  precarious,  or,  in  other  words,  where  property 
and  comfort  are  ill  distributed  ;  2nd,  where  political  democracy 
is  already  a  matter  of  popular  agitation  ;  and,  3rd,  where  pre- 
vious revolutions  have  left  behind  them  an  unquiet  and 
revolutionary  spirit — a  "  valetudinary  habit,"  as  Burke  calls 
it,  "of  making  the  extreme  medicine  of  the  State  its  daily 
bread."  That  is  very  much  what  we  do  find.  All  these 
conditions  are  present  in  Germany — the  country  in  which 
socialism  has  made  the  most  remarkable  and  rapid  advance. 
Dr.  Engel,  head  of  the  Statistical  Bureau  of  Prussia,  states 
that  in  1875  six  million  persons,  representing,  with  their 
famihes,  more  than  half  the  population  of  that  State,  had  an 
income  less  than  £21  a  year  each ;  and  only  140,000  persons 
had  incomes  above  £150.  The  number  of  landed  proprietors 
is  indeed  comparatively  large.  In  1861  there  were  more  than 
two  millions  of  them  out  of  a  population  of  23,000,000 ;  and  in 
a  country  where  half  the  people  are  engaged  in  agriculture 
this  would,  at  first  sight,  seem  to  offer  some  assurance  of 
general  comfort.  But  then  the  estates  of  most  of  them  are 
much  too  small  to  keep  them  in  regular  employment  or  to 
furnish  them  with  adequate  maintenance.  More  than  a 
million  hold  estates  of  less  than  three  acres  each,  and  aver- 
aging little  over  an  acre,  and  the  soil  is  poor.  The  consequence 
is  that  the  small  proprietor  is  almost  always  over  head  and 
ears  in  debt.  His  property  can  hardly  be  called  his  own,  and 
he  pays  to  the  usurer  a  much  larger  sum  annually  as  interest 
than  he  could  rent  the  same  land  for  in  the  open  market. 


32  Contemporary  Socialism. 

More  tliaii  half  of  tlaese  small  estates  lie  in  the  Rhine  pro- 
vinces alone,  and  the  distressed  condition  of  the  peasantry 
there  has  been  lately  brought  again  before  the  attention 
of  the  legislature.  But  while  thus  in  the  west  the  agricultural 
population  suffers  seriously  from  the  excessive  subdivision  of 
landed  property,  they  are  straitened  in  the  eastern  and 
northern  provinces  by  their  exclusion  from  it.  Prince 
Bismarck,  speaking  of  the  spread  of  socialism  in  a  purely 
agricultural  district  like  Lauenburg,  which  had  excited  sur- 
prise, said  that  this  would  not  seem  remarkable  to  any  one 
who  reflected  that,  from  the  land  legislation  in  that  part  of 
the  country,  the  labourers  could  never  hope  to  acquire  the 
smallest  spot  of  ground  as  their  own  possession,  and  were  kept 
in  a  state  of  dependence  on  the  gentry  and  the  peasant  pro- 
prietors. Half  the  land  of  Prussia  is  held  \y^  31,000  persons  ; 
and  emigration,  which  used  to  come  chiefly  from  the  eastern 
provinces,  where  subdivision  had  produced  a  large  class  of 
indigent  proprietors,  proceeds  now  predominantly  from  the 
quarters  where  large  estates  abound.  The  diminution  of 
emigration  from  the  Rhine  provinces  is  indeed  one  cause  of 
the  increase  of  distress  among  the  peasant  proprietary ;  but 
why  emigration  has  ceased,  when  there  seems  more  motive  for 
it,  is  not  so  clear.  As  yet,  however,  socialism  has  taken  com- 
paratively slight  hold  of  the  rural  population  of  Germany, 
because  they  are  too  scattered  in  most  parts  to  combine ;  but 
there  exists  in  that  country,  as  in  others,  a  general  conviction 
that  the  condition  of  the  agricultural  labourers  is  really  a 
graver  social  question  than  the  condition  of  the  other  in- 
dustrial classes,  and  must  be  faced  in  most  countries  before 
long.  Socialism  has  naturally  made  most  way  among  the 
factory  operatives  of  Germany,  who  enjoy  greatest  facilities 
for  combination  and  mutual  fermentation,  and  who  besides, 
while  better  off  in  respect  to  wages  than  various  other  sections 
of  workpeople,  are  yet  the  most  improvident  and  discontented 
class  in  the  community.  Then,  in  considering  the  circum- 
stances of  the  labouring  classes  in  Germany,  it  must  be  re- 
membered that,  through  customs  and  indirect  taxation  of 
different  kinds,  they  pay  a  larger  share  of  the  public  burdens 
than  they  do  in  some  countries^  and  that  the  obligation  of 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism. 


military  service  is  felt  to  be  so  great  a  hardship  that  more  than 
a  third  of  the  extensive  emigration  which  now  takes  place 
every  year  from  the  German  Empire  is  prompted  by  a  desire 
to  escape  it.  Before  the  establishment  of  the  Empire,  only 
about  a  tenth  part  of  the  emigrants  left  the  country  without 
an  official  permit ;  but  the  proportion  has  been  rising  every 
year  since  then,  and  sometimes  comes  to  nearly  a  half. 

Under  these  circumstances  neither  the  strength  nor  the  pro- 
gress of  the  Social  Democratic  party  in  that  country  affords 
occasion  for  surprise.  At  the  last  general  election,  in  February, 
1890,  this  party  polled  more  votes  than  any  other  single  partj- 
in  the  Empire,  and  returned  to  the  Imperial  Diet  a  body  of 
representatives  strong  enough,  by  skilful  alliances,  to  exercise 
an  effective  influence  on  the  course  of  affairs.  The  advance  of 
the  party  may  be  seen  in  the  increase  of  the  socialist  vote  at 
the  successive  elections  since  the  creation  of  the  Empire. 


In  1871  it  was 

,,1874  „ 

„  1877  „ 

,,1878  „ 

„  1881  „ 

„  1884  „ 

„  1887  „ 

„  1890  „ 


101,927. 
351,670. 
493,447. 
437,438. 
311,961. 
549,000. 
774,123. 
1,427,000. 


The  effect  of  the  coercive  laws  of  1878,  as  shown  by  these 
figures,  is  very  noteworthy.  In  consequence  of  the  successive 
attempts  made  in  that  j^ear  on  the  life  of  the  Emperor  William 
by  two  socialists,  Hoedel  and  Nobiling,  Prince  Bismarck  de- 
termined to  stamp  out  the  whole  agitation  with  which  the  two 
criminals  were  connected  by  obtaining  from  the  Diet  excep- 
tional and  temporary  powers  of  repression.  The  first  effect  of 
these  measures  was,  as  was  natural,  to  disorganize  the  socialist 
party  for  the  time.  Hundreds  of  its  leaders  were  expelled  from 
the  country ;  hundreds  were  thrown  into  prison  or  placed  under 
police  restriction ;  its  clubs  and  newspapers  were  suppressed  ; 
it  was  not  allowed  to  hold  meetings,  to  make  speeches,  or  to 
circulate  literature  of  any  kind.  In  the  course  of  the  twelve 
years  during  which  this  exceptional  legislation  has  sub- 
sisted, it  was  stated  at  the  recent  Socialist  Congress  at  Halle, 


34  .     Contemporary  Socialism. 

tliat  155  socialist  journals  and  1200  books  or  pamphlets  had 
been  prohibited ;  900  members  of  the  party  had  been  banished 
without  trial ;  1600  had  been  apprehended  and  300  punished 
for  contraventions  of  the  Anti-Socialist  Laws.  These  measures 
paralyzed  the  old  organization  sufficiently  to  reduce  the  So- 
cialist vote  at  the  next  election  in  1881  by  thirty  per  cent,  ; 
but  the  party  presently  recovered  its  ground.  It  adapted 
itself  to  the  new  conditions,  and  established  a  secret  propaganda 
which  was  manifestly  quite  as  effective  for  its  purposes  as  the 
old,  and  charged  with  more  danger  to  the  State.  Its  vote  in- 
creased immensely  at  each  successive  election  thereafter  ;  and 
now,  as  Rodbertus  prophesied,  the  social  question  has  really 
proved  "  the  Russian  campaign  of  Bismarck's  fame,"  for  his 
policy  of  repression  has  ended  in  tripling  the  strength  of  the 
party  it  was  designed  to  crush,  and  placing  it  in  possession  of 
one-iifth  of  the  whole  voting  power  of  the  nation.  It  was 
high  time,  therefore,  to  abandon  so  ineffectual  a  policy,  and 
the  socialist  coercive  laws  expired  on  the  30th  September, 
1890,  and  the  socialists  inaugurated  a  new  epoch  of  open  and 
constitutional  agitation  by  a  general  congress  at  Halle  in  the 
beginning  of  October, 

The  strength  of  the  party  in  Parliament  has  never  cor- 
responded with  its  strength  at  the  polls.  In  1871  it  returned 
only  1  member  to  the  Diet ;  in  1874,  9 ;  in  1877,  12  ;  in  1878, 
9 ;  in  1881,  12  ;  in  1884,  24;  in  1887,  11 ;  and  in  1890,  with  an 
electoral  vote  which,  under  a  system  of  proportional  representa- 
tion, would  have  secured  for  it  80  members,  it  has  carried  only 
87.  The  party  has  no  leaders  now,  in  Parliament  or  out  of  it, 
of  the  intellectual  rank  of  Lassalle  or  Marx ;  but  it  is  very 
efficiently  led.  Its  two  chiefs,  Liebknecht  and  Bebel,  are  well 
skilled  both  in  debate  and  in  management,  and  have  for  many 
years  maintained  their  authority  in  a  party  peculiarly  subject 
to  jealousy  and  intrigue,  and  have  consolidated  its  organization 
under  very  adverse  conditions.  Liebknecht,  who  is  a  journalist 
of  most  respectable  talents,  character,  and  acquirements,  is 
now  the  veteran  of  the  movement,  having  been  out  in  the  '48 
and  passed  twelve  years  of  political  exile  in  London  in  constant 
intercourse  with  Karl  Marx,  Bebel,  a  turner  in  Leipzig,  is  a 
much  younger  man,  and,  indeed,  is  one  of  Liebknecht's  con- 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.    35 

verts,  for  lie  opposed  the  movement  when  it  was  first  started  in 
Leipzig  by  Lassalle  ;  but  he  has  fought  so  long  and  so  stout  a 
battle  for  his  cause  that  he  too  seems  now  one  of  its  veterans. 
The  other  parliamentary  leaders  of  the  party  are  for  the  most 
part  still  under  thirty.  Von  Volmar,  a  military  officer  who 
has  left  the  service  for  agitation  and  journalism,  seems  to  be 
the  older  leaders'  chief  lieutenant;  and  Frohme,  a  young 
litterateur  of  repute,  may  be  mentioned  because  he  heads  a 
tendency  to  more  moderate  policy. 

Owing  to  the  paucity  of  its  representatives,  the  party  has 
hitherto  made  little  attempt  to  initiate  legislation.  No  bill  can 
be  introduced  into  the  German  Diet  unless  it  is  backed  by  fifteen 
members ;  and,  except  in  the  Parliament  of  1884-7,  the  Socialist 
party  never  had  fifteen  members  until  last  February.  The 
work  of  its  parliamentary  representatives,  therefore,  has  con- 
sisted mainly  of  criticism  and  opposition,  and  seizing  every 
suitable  occasion  for  the  ventilation  of  their  general  ideas ;  but 
after  the  election  of  188i,  when  they  returned  to  the  Diet 
twenty-four  strong,  they  introduced  first  a  bill  for  the  prohibi- 
tion of  Sunday  labour,  which  was  stoutly  opposed  by  Prince 
Bismarck,  and  defeated ;  and  second,  a  Labourer's  Protection 
Bill,  proposing  to  create  an  elaborate  organization  for  securing 
the  general  wellbeing  of  the  working  class.  It  was  to  create,, 
first,  a  new  Labour  Department  of  State ;  second,  a  series  of 
"Workmen's  Chambers,  one  for  every  district  of  200,000  or 
400,000  inhabitants,  with  the  necessary  number  of  local  auxi- 
liaries ;  third.  Local  Courts  of  Conciliation  for  the  settlement  of 
difierences  between  labourers  and  employers,  from  whose  deci- 
sion there  should  be  an  appeal  to  the  Workmen's  Chamber  of 
the  District.  Both  the  Court  of  Conciliation  and  the  Work- 
men's Chamber  were  to  be  composed  of  an  equal  number  of 
employers  and  employed.  The  connection  between  the  Work- 
men's Chambers  of  the  District  and  the  Minister  of  Labour 
would  be  through  District  Councils  of  Labour,  the  members  of 
which  were  to  be  chosen  by  the  minister  out  of  a  list  pre- 
sented by  the  Workmen's  Chamber  of  the  District,  and  con- 
taining twice  the  number  of  names  required  to  fill  the  places. 
It  was  to  be  the  duty  of  these  Councils  of  Labour  to  send 
a  report  every  j^ear  to  the  Labour  Department  in  Berlin  on 


36  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  condition  of  labour  in  their  respective  districts  after  an 
annual  inspection  of  all  the  factories,  workshops,  and  industrial 
establishments  of  any  kind  located  there.  The  Workmen's 
Chambers  were  to  have  a  wide  r<5/e,  and  were  the  keystone  of 
the  system.  Besides  being  the  courts  of  final  appeal  in  labour 
disputes,  they  were  to  bring  to  the  knowledge  of  the  compe- 
tent authorities  the  existence  of  any  disorders  or  grievancer- 
that  occurred  in  industrial  life  ;  to  give  advice  on  the  best  laws 
and  regulations  for  industry  ;  to  undertake  inquiries  into  all 
matters  affecting  the  conditions  of  labour,  treaties  of  commerce, 
taxes,  rates  of  wages,  technical  education,  housing,  prices  of 
subsistence,  etc. 

In  introducing  the  bill,  its  promoters  said  a  chief  object  of  the 
whole  organization  was  to  obtain  for  working  men  higher  wages 
for  a  shorter  day's  work,  and  they  proposed  the  immediate  re- 
duction of  the  day  of  labour  to  eight  hours  for  miners  and  ten 
hours  for  all  other  trades,  together  with  some  further  limitations 
on  the  work  of  women  and  children,  the  abolition  of  prison  work 
at  ordinary  trades,  and  of  Sunday  work,  and  the  requirement 
of  the  payment  of  wages  weekly,  and  their  payment  in  money. 
The  bill  was  referred  to  a  committee  of  the  House,  and  re- 
jected, after  that  committee  brought  up  an  unfavourable  report 
in  February,  1886,  and  nothing  further  has  been  done  in  the 
matter  since  ;  but  the  Minister  of  the  Interior  was  so  much 
struck  with  the  unexpectedly  moderate  and  practical  character 
of  its  proposals  that  he  said  if  these  proposals  expressed  the 
whole  mind  of  the  members  who  proposed  them,  then  those 
members  might  as  well  sit  on  the  right  side  of  the  House  as  on 
the  left.  The  effect  of  the  bill,  as  far  as  it  was  workable,  would 
merely  be  to  give  the  working  class  a  real  and  systematic,  but 
not  unequal,  voice  in  settling  the  conditions  of  their  own  labour ; 
and  its  rejection  is  to  some  extent  an  example  of  the  way  the 
socialist  agitation  impedes  the  cause  of  labour  by  creating  in  the 
public  mind  an  unnecessary  distrust  even  of  reasonable  reforms. 

There  are  some  questions  of  general  policy  on  which  the 
socialist  deputies  take  up  a  position  of  their  own.  They 
always  oppose  the  military  budget,  because,  like  socialists 
everywhere,  they  are  opposed  to  a,ll  war  and  armaments. 
Wars  are  merely  quarrels  of  rulers,  for  peoples  would  make  for 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialis?n.    3  7 

peace,  and  armaments  only  drain  the  people's  pockets  in  order 
to  perpetuate  the  people's  oppression.  Then  they  are  opposed 
to  national  debts,  because  national  debts  enable  rulers  to  carry 
on  war.  They  are  opposed  to  the  new  colonization  policy  of 
the  Empire,  because  in  their  opinion  it  is  a  policy  of  aggran- 
disement and  conquest  undertaken  under  hypocritical  pre- 
tences. They  are  opposed  to  protective  duties,  because  they 
dislike  indirect  taxation,  as  bearing  always  unjustly  on  the 
labouring  class.  They  are  strong  supporters  of  popular  educa- 
tion, but  they  opposed  the  new  insurance  laws  because  they 
feared  these  laws  would  place  people  too  much  under  the  power 
of  the  Government,  for  their  jealousy  of  the  Government  that 
exists  corrects  their  general  partiality  for  Government  control, 
and  tends  to  keep  them  back  even  from  some  of  the  minor 
excesses  of  State-socialism. 

The  moderate  and  apparently  temporizing  policy  of  the 
deputies  is  a  constant  source  of  dissatisfaction  to  the  wilder 
and  more  inexperienced  members  of  the  party,  who  complain, 
as  they  did  at  the  recent  Halle  Congress,  that  trjdng  to  improve 
the  present  system  of  things  is  not  the  best  way  of  subverting 
it,  and  who  will  either  have  socialism  cum  revolution,  or  they 
will  have  nothing  at  all.  But  the  older  heads  merely  smile, 
and  tell  them  the  hour  for  socialism  and  revolution  is  not  yet, 
that  no  man  knows  when  it  shall  be,  and  that  in  the  meantime 
it  would  be  mere  folly  for  socialists  to  refuse  the  real  comforts 
they  can  get  because  they  think  they  have  ideally  a  right  to 
a  great  deal  more.  "  Wh}^,"  said  Bebel,  when  he  was  charged 
at  Halle  with  countenancing  armaments  in  violation  of  sociahst 
principles  by  voting  for  a  better  uniform  to  the  soldiers, — 
"  why,  there  are  numbers  of  Social  Democrats  in  the  Reserve, 
and  was  I  to  let  them  die  through  inadequate  clothing  merely 
because  I  object  to  armaments  as  a  general  principle  ?  " 

They  of  course  think  of  this  policy  of  accommodation  as 
only  a  temporary  necessity,  till  they  become  strong  enough  to 
be  thoroughgoing ;  but  there  is  perhaps  better  reason  to  believe 
it  to  be  an  abiding  and  growing  necessity  of  their  position, 
for  they  are  finding  themselves  more  and  more  obliged,  if  thej' 
are  to  become  stronger  at  all,  or  even  to  keep  the  strength 
they  have,  to  bid  for  the  support  of  aggrieved  classes  by  work- 


3^  Contemporary  Socialism. 

ing  for  the  immediate  removal  of  their  grievances,  and  thus 
to  keep  on  reducing  day  by  day  as  it  rises  the  volume  of  that 
social  discontent  which  is  to  turn  the  wheel  of  revolution.  It 
is  not  unlikely  that  the  socialist  party,  now  that  it  is  sufficiently 
powerful  to  do  something  in  the  legislature,  but  not  sufficiently 
powerful  to  think  of  final  social  transformation,  will  occupy 
themselves  much  more  completely  with  those  miscellaneous 
social  reforms  in  the  immediate  future  ;  that  they  will  thereby 
become  every  day  better  acquainted  with  the  real  conditions 
on  which  social  improvement  depends;  that  they  will  find 
more  and  more  satisfying  employment  in  the  exercise  of  their 
power  of  securing  palpable,  practical  benefits,  than  in  agitating 
uncertain  theoretical  schemes  ;  and,  in  short,  that  they  will 
settle  permanently  into  what  they  are  for  the  present  to  some 
extent  temporarily,  a  moderate  labour  party,  working  for  the 
real  remedy  of  real  grievances  by  the  means  best  adapted, 
under  real  conditions,  national  or  political,  for  effecting  the 
purpose. 

The  programme  of  the  party,  which  was  adopted  at  the 
Gotha  Congress  of  1875,  after  the  union  of  the  Marxist  socialists 
and  the  Lassalleans,  and  has  remained  unaltered  ever  since, 
has  always  consisted  of  a  deferred  part  and  an  actual.  It  con- 
tains, in  fact,  three  programmes — the  programme  for  to-day, 
the  programme  for  to-morrow,  and  the  programme  for  the  day 
after  to-morrow.  The  last  is  of  course  the  socialist  State  of 
the  future,  at  present  beyond  our  horizon  altogether.  Before  it 
appears  there  is  to  be  a  more  or  less  prolonged  period  in  which 
individual  management  of  industry  is  to  be  gradually  super- 
seded by  co-operative  societies  founded  on  State  credit;  but 
this  intermediate  state  was  only  made  an  article  of  the  pro- 
gramme to  conciliate  the  Lassalleans,  and  one  hears  less  of 
productive  associations  to-day  from  the  German  socialists  than 
from  the  French.  The  Germans  would  apparently  prefer  to 
go  from  private  property  to  public  property  direct  rather  than 
go  v'ul  corporate  property ;  but  in  any  case  their  programme 
leaves  the  creation  of  productive  societies  to  a  future  period, 
and  their  task  for  the  present  is  to  secure  for  working  men 
factory  and  sanitary  legislation,  constitutional  liberties,  and 
an  easier  and  more  equitable  system  of  taxation. 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     39 

The  programme  is  as  follows : — 

"I.  Labour  is  the  source  of  all  wealth  and  civilization,  and 
since  productive  labour  as  a  whole  is  made  possible  only  in 
and  through  society,  the  entire  produce  of  labour  belongs  to 
society,  that  is,  it  belongs  by  an  equal  right  to  all  its  mem- 
bers, each  according  to  his  reasonable  needs,  upon  condition 
of  a  universal  obligation  to  labour. 

"In  existing  society  the  instruments  of  labour  are  the 
monopoly  of  the  capitalist  class  ;  the  dependence  of  the  labour- 
ing class  which  results  therefrom  is  the  cause  of  misery  and 
servitude  in  all  forms. 

"  The  emancipation  of  labour  requires  the  conversion  of  the 
instruments  of  labour  into  the  common  property  of  society, 
and  the  management  of  labour  by  association,  and  the  appli- 
cation of  the  product  with  a  view  to  the  general  good  and  an 
equitable  distribution. 

"  The  emancipation  of  labour  must  be  the  work  of  the  labour- 
ing class,  in  relation  to  which  all  other  classes  are  only  a 
reactionary  mass. 

"  n.  Starting  from  these  principles,  the  Socialistic  Labour 
Party  of  Germany  seeks  by  all  lawful  means  to  establish  a 
free  State  and  a  socialistic  society,  to  break  asunder  the  iron 
law  of  wages  by  the  abolition  of  the  system  of  wage-labour, 
the  suppression  of  every  form  of  exploitation,  and  the  correction 
of  all  political  and  social  inequality. 

"  The  Socialistic  Labour  Party  of  Germany,  although  at  first 
working  within  national  limits,  is  sensible  of  the  international 
character  of  the  labour  movement,  and  resolved  to  fulfil  all 
the  duties  thereby  laid  on  working  men,  in  order  to  realize  the 
brotherhood  of  all  men. 

"  The  Socialistic  Labour  Party  of  Germany  demands,  in 
order  to  pave  the  way  for  the  solution  of  the  social  question, 
the  establishment  by  State  help  of  socialistic  productive 
associations  under  the  democratic  control  of  the  workpeople. 
Productive  associations  for  industry  and  agriculture  should  be 
created  to  such  an  extent  that  the  sociahstic  organization  of 
all  labour  may  arise  out  of  them. 

"  The  Socialistic  Labour  Party  of  Germany  demands,  as  the 
basis  of  the  State,  (1)  Universal,  equal,  and  direct  suffrage, 


40  Contemporary  Socialism. 

together  with  secret  and  obligatory  voting,  for  all  citizens  over 
twenty  years  of  age,  in  all  elections  in  State  and  commune. 
The  election  day  must  be  a  Sunday  or  holiday.  (2)  Direct 
legislation  by  the  people.  Decision  on  peace  or  war  by  the 
people.  (3)  Universal  liability  to  military  service.  Militia 
instead  of  standing  army.  (4)  Abolition  of  all  exceptional 
laws,  especially  laws  interfering  with  liberty  of  the  press,  of 
association,  and  of  meeting ;  in  general,  all  laws  restricting 
free  expression  of  opinion,  free  thought,  and  free  inquiry.  (5) 
Administration  of  justice  by  the  people.  Gratuitous  justice. 
(6)  Universal,  compulsory,  gratuitous,  and  equal  education  of 
the  people  by  the  State.  Religion  to  be  declared  a  private 
affair, 

"  The  Socialistic  Labour  Party  of  Germany  demands  within 
the  conditions  of  existing  society  (1)  The  utmost  possible  ex- 
tension of  political  rights  and  liberties  in  the  sense  of  the 
above  demands.  (2)  The  replacement  of  all  existing  taxes, 
and  especially  of  indirect  taxes,  which  peculiarly  burden  the 
people,  by  a  single  progressive  income  tax  for  State  and  com- 
mune. (3)  Unrestricted  right  of  combination.  (4)  A  normal 
working  day  corresponding  to  the  needs  of  society.  Prohibition 
of  Sunday  labour.  (5)  Prohibition  of  the  labour  of  children, 
and  of  all  labour  for  women  that  is  injurious  to  health  and 
morality.  (6)  Laws  for  protection  of  the  life  and  health  of 
workmen.  Sanitary  control  of  workmen's  dwellings.  Inspec- 
tion of  mines,  factories,  workshops,  and  home  industry  by 
oJSicers  chosen  by  working  men.  An  effective  employers' 
liability  act.  (7)  Regulation  of  prison  labour.  (8)  Entire 
freedom  of  management  for  all  funds  for  the  assistance  and 
support  of  working  men." 

A  committee  was  appointed  at  the  recent  Halle  Congress  to 
revise  this  programme  and  report  to  the  Congress  of  1891 ;  but 
as  the  revision  is  merely  intended  to  place  the  programme  in 
greater  conformity  with  the  needs  of  the  time,  and  keep  it 
as  it  were  up  to  date,  only  minor  modifications  may  be  expected, 
and  those  probably  in  the  direction  of  a  more  practical  and 
effectual  dealing  with  existing  grievances.  Five  years  ago 
the  party  thought  a  ten  hours'  day  corresponded  with  the  needs 
of  the  time  ;  they  now  ask  for  an  eight  hours'  one.    Instead  of 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.    4 1 

the  prohibition  of  Sunday  labour,  they  now  prefer  to  demand, 
as  a  more  workable  equivalent,  a  period  of  thirty-six  hours' 
continuous  and  uninterrupted  rest  every  week,  irrespective  of 
any  particular  day;  and  they  have  sometimes  taken  up  new 
working-class  questions  not  especially  mentioned  in  their  pro- 
gramme, or  included  directly  under  any  of  its  heads,  like  the 
abolition  of  payment  of  wages  in  kind.  The  whole  spirit  of 
the  late  Congress  leads  us  to  look  for  the  contemplated  modi- 
fications in  this  direction  of  meeting  more  effectually  im- 
mediate working-class  wants. 

Many  eyes  were  upon  that  Congress ;  for  it  was  the  first 
the  German  socialists  had  held  since  they  had  recovered  their 
freedom  and  proved  their  strength.  They  were  now  clearly 
stronger  than  any  socialist  party  the  world  had  yet  seen,  and 
much  stronger  than  most  revolutionary  parties  who  have  made 
successful  revolution.  Would  then  the  word  now  be  revolu- 
tion ?  people  asked.  It  was  not :  the  word  was  caution.  The 
first  effect  of  the  victory  in  February  had  been  otherwise,  and 
in  June,  Herr  Bebel  was  still  calling,  Steady.  "  The  majority 
of  his  party  colleagues,"  he  said  at  a  public  meeting  in  Berlin 
on  the  20th  of  that  month,  "  had  been  intoxicated  by  the  result 
of  the  elections  of  February  20th,  and  believed  they  could  do 
what  they  liked  with  the  middle  class,  as  it  was  already  on  the 
point  of  going  under."  But  before  October  steadier  counsels 
prevailed,  and  the  spirit  of  the  Congress  was  moderation  itself. 
Although  the  Congress  did  not  agree  to  the  motion  to  restore 
to  the  party  programme  the  phrase  "  by  lawful  means,"  which 
had  been  deleted  from  the  opening  paragraph  of  the  second  part 
of  it  by  the  Wyden  Congress  of  1880,  in  consequence  of  the 
Anti-Socialist  Laws  no  longer  giving  them  any  choice  except 
recourse  to  unlawful  means,  the  general  and  decided  feeling  of 
the  Congress  certainly  was  that  only  lawful  means  could  now 
answer  their  purposes.  The  controversy  was  repeatedly  raised 
by  an  extreme  section  of  the  party  fi'om  Berlin,  who  com- 
plained that  the  work  of  their  parhamentary  representatives 
had  hitherto  entirely  ignored  the  real  aims  of  social  demo- 
cracy, and  that  a  return  should  now  be  made  to  its  socialism 
and  its  revolution.  But  the  voice  of  the  meeting  was  invariably 
against  this  Berlin  movement.      There  was  a  time,  said  M. 


42  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Fleischman — and  his  speech  was  applauded — when  it  was 
counted  the  right  thing  in  the  party  to  make  revolutionary 
speeches,  and  point  to  the  coming  day  of  account  when  mankind 
were  to  be  emancipated  at  one  blow ;  but  that  was  not  a  road 
they  could  make  any  progress  by.  And  as  for  boycotting, 
which  had  been  spoken  of,  he  declared  he  was  all  for  boycotting; 
but  it  was  the  boycotting  of  the  military  in  such  a  way  as  to 
give  them  no  occasion  for  the  use  of  their  weapons.  Lieb- 
knecht,  the  chief  leader  of  the  party,  followed,  and  was  quite  as 
emphatic  in  the  same  line.  People  spoke  of  revolution,  he  said ; 
but  they  should  remember  that  roast  pigeons  don't  fly  into  one's 
mouth  by  themselves.  It  was  easy  enough  to  make  bitter 
speeches,  and  any  fool  and  donkey  could  throw  bombs  ;  but 
the  misadventures  of  the  anarchists  showed  plainly  enough 
that  nothing  could  be  done  in  that  way.  The  socialists  had 
now  20  per  cent,  of  the  population ;  but  what  could  20  per 
cent,  do  against  80  per  cent,  by  the  use  of  force  ?  No,  it  was 
not  force ;  it  was  reason  they  must  use  if  they  would  succeed. 
What,  then,  he  asked,  was  the  Social  Democracy  to  do  ?  They 
must  avoid  divisions  among  themselves,  and  go  out  and  convert 
the  still  indifferent  masses.  The  electoral  suffrage  was  their 
best  weapon  of  agitation,  and  their  surest  means  of  increasing 
the  party.  Prince  Bismarck  had  been  represented  in  a  popu- 
lar book  as  practising  peasant-fishery  and  elector-fishery. 
"Peasant-fishery  and  elector-fishery — "said  Liebknecht,  amid 
much  applause,  "  that  is  the  word  for  the  Social  Democrats  to- 
day." 

Another  suggestion  of  the  extreme  section  was  that  the 
party  should  now  assail  the  Church  and  religion,  as  sociahst 
and  revolutionary  parties  have  so  generally  done  ;  but  this 
bit  of  their  old  traditional  policy  received  scant  regard  from 
the  Halle  Congress.  A  strong  feeling  was  expressed  that  the 
party  had  damaged  itself  in  the  past  by  its  assaults  on  the 
Church,  and  that  its  present  policy  ought,  in  self-preserva- 
tion, to  be  one  of  religious  neutrality  and  toleration.  "  In- 
stead," said  Liebknecht,  "  of  squandering  our  strength  in 
a  struggle  with  the  Church  and  sacerdotalism,  let  us  go  to 
the  root  of  the  matter.  We  desire  to  overthrow  the  State  of 
the  classes.     When  we  have  done  that,  the  Church  and  sacer- 


The  Progress  and  Present  Positioii  of  Socialism.    43 

dotalism  will  fall  with  it,  and  in  this  respect  we  are  much  more 
radical  and  much  more  definite  in  purpose  than  our  opponents, 
for  we  like  neither  the  priests  nor  the  anti-priests."  The  old 
revolutionary  policy  of  stirring  up  hatred  against  all  existing 
institutions  is  thus  relegated  from  the  present  to  the  distant 
future,  after  the  present  class-State  is  overthrown  and  the 
working-class  or  socialist  State  estabhshed  in  its  place. 

"Well,  then,"  suggested  another  old-world  socialist,  "let us,  at 
any  rate,  issue  a  pamphlet  describing  the  glories  of  this  social- 
ist State,  and  get  the  people  prepared  to  flock  into  it " ;  but  this 
suggestion  was  also  frowned  down.  "  For,"  said  Liebknecht, 
"  who  could  say  what  the  Ziikunft  Staat — the  socialist  State 
of  the  future — is  to  be  ?  Who  could  foresee  so  much  as  the 
development  of  the  existing  German  State  for  a  single  year  ?  " 
In  other  words — I  think  I  am  not  misinter^preting  their  mean- 
ing— the  State  of  the  future  is  the  concern  of  the  future ; 
the  business  of  a  living  party  is  within  the  needs  and  within 
the  lines  of  the  living  present. 

What,  then,  is  to  be  the  business  of  this  formidable  Social 
Democratic  party  ?  Peasant-catching  is  the  word.  The  elec- 
tions showed  tiiat  while  the  party  was  very  strong  in  the  large 
towns,  it  was  very  weak  in  the  rural  districts,  and  among 
special  populations  like  the  Poles  and  Alsatians;  and  although 
previous  revolutionists  thought  everything  was  gained  if  the 
large  towns  were  gained,  the  Social  Democrats  generally 
admit  that  the  social  revolution  is  impossible  without  the 
adherence  of  the  peasantry.  The  peasants,  therefore,  must 
be  won  over  to  the  party.  Once  in  the  party,  they  may  learn 
socialism  and  revolution,  but  they  must  first  be  brought  in, 
and  for  that  purpose  there  must  be  started  a  special  peasants' 
cry — a  cry,  that  is,  for  the  redress  of  some  immediate  grievance 
of  that  class ;  and  one  suggestion  made  at  the  Congress 
was,  that  the  cry  for  the  peasantry  should  be  the  abolition 
of  the  German  Gesinde  (farm-servant)  system.  In  the  same 
spirit  the  Congress  recommended  the  parliamentary  party  to 
take  up  the  question  of  seamen's  rights,  and  agitate  for  better 
regulations  for  securing  the  wellbeing  of  that  class.  The 
advance  towards  practicality  is  eveii  more  evident  in  their 
determination   upon   strikes.      Hitherto,   for   the    most   part, 


44  Contemporary  Socialism. 

socialists  liave  either  looked  on  strikes  with  lofty  disdain  as  poor 
attempts  to  get  a  pettj^  rise  in  wages  instead  of  abolishing  the 
present  wages  system  altogether,  or  they  have  thrown  them- 
selves into  strikes  for  the  mere  purpose  of  fomenting  labour 
troubles,  and  breaking  perchance  the  power  of  the  large  capital- 
ist class;  and  this  latter  view  was  not  unrepresented  at  the  Halle 
Congress.  The  resolution  of  the  Congress,  however,  declared 
(1st)  that  strikes  and  boycotting  were  often  useful  means  of 
improving  the  social  position  of  the  labouring  class  ;  but  (2nd) 
that  they  were  to  be  resorted  to  even  for  that  purpose  with 
great  circumspection.  "  Whereas,  however,  strikes  and  boy- 
cotting are  double-edged  weapons  which,  when  used  in  unsuit- 
able places  and  at  an  inopportune  moment,  are  calculated  to 
do  more  harm  than  good  to  the  interests  of  the  working  class, 
this  Congress  recommends  German  working  men  carefully  to 
weigh  the  circumstances  under  which  they  purpose  to  make 
use  of  those  weapons."  The  revolutionary  ideal  seems  thus 
to  be  retreating — perhaps  insensibly — in  the  socialistic  mind 
into  an  eschatological  decoration,  into  a  kind  of  future  Advent 
which  is  to  come  and  to  be  believed  in ;  but  the  practical  con- 
cerns of  the  present  must  be  more  and  more  treated  in  their 
own  practical  way. 

Since  the  Congress,  the  party  has  issued  a  manifesto  to  the 
peasantry,  in  which,  after  promising  a  new  and  happy  day  that 
is  coming  for  them,  which  is  to  restore  to  them  the  beautiful 
earth  and  the  poetry  of  life,  they  declare  against  the  patri- 
archal system,  and  the  increase  of  brandy  distilling  ;  and  then, 
confessing  that  few  socialists  know  anything  about  agricul- 
tural questions,  invite  information  and  discussion  for  the  en- 
lightenment of  the  party.  Here  again  they  forget  that  they 
have  a  theory  which  is  as  applicable  to  agriculture  as  to  manu- 
factures, and  they  want  to  make  practical  investigations  with 
a  view  to  practical  solutions. 

Of  course  the  movement  will  always  generate  revolutionary 
elements  as  occasions  arise,  and  these  sometimes  of  the  wildest 
character.  Most  and  Hasselman,  and  their  following,  who  were 
expelled  at  the  Congress  of  Wyden  in  1880,  were  anarchists  of 
a  violent  type,  and  Mosts  and  Hasselmans  may  arise  again. 
But  at  present  anarchism  hardly  exists  in  Germany,  and  the 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.    45 

Social  Democratic  party  is  peacefully  trying  to  make  people  as 
comfortable  as  possible  till  the  fulness  of  time  arrives. 

It  may  be  added  that  the  present  income  of  the  party,  as 
stated  at  the  last  Congress,  is  £19,525,  and  that  since  Febru- 
ary, 1890,  they  have  established  nineteen  daily  newspapers 
and  forty  weekly,  with  a  total  circulation  of  25-4,000. 

The  socialist  movement  in  other  countries  may  be  disposed 
of  much  more  briefly,  for  in  no  other  country  has  it  worn  any- 
thing like  the  same  importance,  except  in  Russia,  and  of  the 
Russian  agitation  I  shall  treat  more  fully  in  a  subsequent 
chapter  on  "  Russian  Nihilism."  I  may  observe  here,  however, 
that  the  Russian  agitation  has  not  been  without  its  influence 
on  the  nations  of  Western  Europe.  It  was  Bakunin  who  first 
kindled  the  socialist  movements  of  Spain,  Italy,  Belgium, 
and  Holland,  and  the  anarchist  fermentations  of  the  last  six 
years  have  been  due  in  no  inconsiderable  measure  to  the  new 
leaven  of  Russian  ideas  introduced  by  men  like  Prince  Kra- 
potkin  and  the  two  hundred  other  Russian  refugees  that  are 
scattered  abroad  in  the  free  countries  of  Europe. 

In  France  there  is  much  animated  socialist  agitation,  but 
no  solid  and  coherent  socialist  party  such  as  exists  in  Ger- 
many. The  movement  is  disunited  and  fragmentary,  and 
confined  almost  entirely  to  the  large  towns,  where  many  cir- 
cumstances conspire  to  favour  its  growth.  The  French  work- 
ing class  are  born  to  revolutionary  traditions.  The  better 
portion  of  them,  moreover,  though  they  long  since  gave  up 
all  belief  in  the  old  native  forms  of  socialism,  never  ceased  to 
be  imbued  with  socialist  ideas  and  aspirations  ;  and  M.  de 
Molinari  said  in  1869,  from  his  experience  of  French  working 
men's  clubs,  that  out  of  every  ten  French  working  men  who  had 
any  interest  beyond  eating  and  drinking,  nine  were  Socialists. 
Then  there  is  in  France  a  larger  proportion  of  the  working 
class  than  in  most  countries,  who  are  kept  in  constant  poverty 
and  discontent  and  commotion  by  their  own  improvident 
habits.  A  pamphlet  called  "Le  Sublime,"  which  attracted 
considerable  attention  some  years  ago,  stated  that  only  forty 
per  cent,  of  the  working  men  of  Paris  were  out  of  debt ;  and  Mr. 
Malet  reported  to  the  English  Foreign  Office  that  they  were,  as 
a  body,  so  dissipated  that  none  of  them  had  grandchildren  or 


46  Contemporary  Socialism, 

grandfatliers.  But,  on  tlie  other  hand,  France  enjoys  a  solid 
security  againstthe  successful  advance  of  socialism  in  her  peasant 
proprietors.  Half  the  French  population  belong  to  that  class, 
and  their  industry,  thrift,  and  comfort  have  long  been  held  up 
to  our  admiration  by  economists.  According  to  M.  de  Lavergne, 
they  are  not  so  well  fed,  so  well  clad,  or  so  well  lodged  as  the 
farm  labourers  of  England  ;  but,  living  in  a  diflferent  climate, 
they  have  fewer  wants,  and  are  undoubtedly  more  contented. 
Among  people  like  these,  passing  their  days  in  frugal  comfort 
and  fruitful  industry,  and  looking  with  quiet  hope  and  confi- 
dence to  the  future,  socialism  finds,  of  course,  no  open  door. 
On  the  contrary,  every  man  of  them  feels  he  has  something  to 
lose  and  nothing  to  gain  by  social  revolution ;  the  fear  of  social- 
ism is,  indeed,  one  of  the  chief  influences  guiding  their  political 
action ;  and  as  they  are  as  numerous  as  all  the  other  classes  in 
the  community  put  together,  their  worldly  contentment  is  a 
bulwark  of  enormous  value  to  the  existing  order  of  things.  The 
impression  of  their  substantial  independence  is  so  marked  that 
even  the  Frenchmen  who  were  members  of  the  International 
"Working  Men's  Association  would  not  assent  to  the  abolition  of 
a  peasant  proprietary,  but  always  insisted,  contrary  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  Association,  on  the  continued  maintenance  of  that 
system  as  a  necessary  counterpoise  to  the  power  of  the  Govern- 
ment. 

The  present  socialist  groups  and  sects  of  France  are  all 
believers  in  the  so-called  scientific  socialism  of  Marx  and 
Lassalle,  and  the  most  important  of  them  work  for  a  pro- 
gramme substantially  identical  with  that  of  Gotha.  Marx's 
ideas  were  introduced  among  the  French  by  the  International, 
and  they  were  adopted  by  a  section  of  the  Revolutionary 
Committee  of  the  Paris  Commune,  1871  ;  but  after  the  sup- 
pression of  the  Commune,  they  made  so  little  stir  for  some 
years  that  Thiers  declared,  in  his  last  manifesto  as  President  of 
the  Republic,  that  socialism,  which  was  then  busy  in  Germany, 
was  absolutely  dead  in  France,  Its  recrudescence  was  chiefly 
due  to  the  activity  of  the  Communards.  Some  of  them  had 
escaped  to  London,  where  they  got  into  closer  communion  with 
Marx  and  his  friends ;  and  in  1874,  thirty-four  of  these  refugees, 
all  military  or  administrative  officers  of  the  Commune,  and 


The  Progress  a7id  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     47 

most  of  them  not  professed  socialists  before,  issued  a  manifesto 
pronouncing  entirely  for  socialism,  and  describing  the  Com- 
mune as  "the  militant  form  of  the  social  revolution" ;  but  it  was 
not  till  after  the  amnesty  of  the  Communards,  and  their  return 
from  New  Caledonia  and  elsewhere  in  1880,  that  the  first 
sensible  ripple  of  socialist  agitation  was  felt  in  France  since 
the  downfall  of  the  second  Republic.  Numbers  of  socialist 
journals  began  to  appear,  and  a  general  congress  of  working 
men,  held  at  Havre  in  1880,  adopted  a  programme  modelled  on 
the  lines  of  that  of  the  German  Social  Democrats,  and  made 
preparations  for  an  active  propaganda  and  organization. 

The  adoption  of  the  socialistic  programme,  however,  rent  the 
Congress  in  three,  and  the  two  opposite  wings,  the  Co-opera- 
tionists  and  the  Anarchists,  withdrew  and  established  separate 
organizations  of  their  own.  The  co-operationists,  believing 
that  the  amelioration  of  the  working  class  would  only  come 
by  the  gradual  execution  of  practicable  and  suitable  measures, 
and  that  these  could  only  be  successfully  carried  by  means  of 
skilful  alliances  with  existing  political  parties,  declared  the 
Havre  programme  to  be  a  programme  for  the  year  2000,  and 
that  the  true  policy  of  the  working  class  now  was  a  policy  of 
possibilities.  This  last  word  is  said  to  supply  the  origin  of  the 
term  Possibilist,  which  has  now  come  to  be  applied  not  to  this 
co-operationist  party,  but  to  one  of  the  two  divisions  into 
which  the  third  or  centre  party  of  the  Havre  Congress — the 
socialists — shortly  afterwards  split  up. 

The  co-operationists  formed  themselves  into  a  body  known  as 
the  Republican  Socialist  Alliance,  which,  as  the  name  indicates, 
aims  at  social  reforms  under  the  existing  republican  form  of 
State.  They  have  held  several  congresses,  their  member- 
ship includes  many  well-known  and  even  eminent  Radical 
politicians — M.  Clemenceau,  for  example — and  they  were 
supported  by  leading  Radical  journals,  like  Le  Justice  and 
V Intransigeant ;  but  their  activity  and  their  numbers  have  both 
dwindled  away,  probably  because  their  work  was  done 
sufficiently  well  already  by  other  poHtical  or  working-class 
organizations. 

The  anarchists  set  up  not  a  single  organization,  but  a 
number  of  little   independent   clubs,  which  agree   with   one 


48  Contemporary   Socialism. 

anotlier  mainly  in  their  dislike  of  all  constituted  authority. 
They  want  to  have  all  things  in  common,  somehow  or  other ; 
but  for  master  or  supsrior  of  any  sort  they  will  have  none, 
be  it  king  or  committee.  Their  ideas  find  ready  favour  in 
France,  because  they  are  near  allied  with  the  theory  of  the 
Revolutionary  Commune  cherished  among  the  Communards ; 
and  although  there  is  no  means  of  calculating  their  numbers 
exactly,  they  are  believed  to  be  pretty  strong — at  least,  in  the 
South  of  France.  At  the  time  of  the  Lyons  Anarchist  trial, 
at  which  Prince  Krapotkin  was  convicted,  they  claimed  them- 
selves to  have  8,000  adherents  in  Lyons  alone.  In  1886  the 
authorities  knew  of  twenty  little  anarchist  clubs  in  Paris, 
which  had  between  them,  however,  only  a  membership  of  1,500 ; 
and  of  these  a  considerable  proportion  were  foreign  immigrants, 
especially  Austrians  and  Russians,  with  a  few  Spaniards.  Some 
of  these  clubs  are  mainly  convivial,  with  a  dash  of  treason  for 
pungency  ;  but  others  have  an  almost  devouring  passion  for 
"  deeds,"  and  are  ever  concerting  some  new  method  of  waging 
their  strange  guerilla  against  "  princes,  proprietors,  and  par- 
sons." "When  a  new  method  is  discovered,  a  new  club  is 
sometimes  formed  to  carry  it  out.  For  instance,  the  Anti- 
proprietaires^  which  is  said  to  be  one  of  the  best  organized  of 
the  anarchist  clubs,  bind  their  members  (1)  to  pay  no  house- 
rent, — rent,  of  course,  being  theft,  and  theft  being  really 
restitution  ;  and  (2)  if  the  landlord  at  length  resorts  to  law 
against  any  of  them  for  this  default,  to  come  to  their  brother's 
help  and  remove  his  furniture  to  safer  quarters  before  the 
moment  of  execution.  The  group  La  Panthere,  to  which 
Louise  Michel  belongs,  and  which  has  600  members,  and  the 
group  Expenmenttil  Chemie,  as  their  names  indicate,  prefer 
less  jocular  methods.  The  best  known  of  the  anarchists  are 
old  Communards  like  Louise  Michel  herself  and  Elisee  Eeclus, 
the  geographer. 

The  third  section  of  the  Havre  Congress  contained  the 
majority  of  the  119  delegates,  and  they  formed  themselves 
into  the  Socialist  Revolutionary  Party  of  France,  with  the 
programme  already  mentioned,  which  was  carried  on  the 
motion  of  M.  Jules  Guesde. 

This   programme   sets  out   with   the   declaration   that  all 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.    49 

instruments  of  production  must  be  transferred  to  the  possession 
of  the  community,  and  that  this  can  only  result  from  an  act  of 
revolution  on  the  part  of  the  working  class  organized  as  an 
independent  political  party,  and  then  it  goes  on  to  say  that  one 
of  the  best  means  of  promoting  this  end  at  present  was  to  take 
part  in  the  elections  with  the  following  platform  : — 

A.  Political. 

1.  Abolition  of  all  laws  restricting  freedom  of  the  press, 
of  association,  or  of  meeting,  and  particularly  the  law  against 
the  International  "Working  Men's  Association.  Abolition  of 
"  work-books." 

2.  AboHtion  of  the  budget  of  public  worship,  and  seculari- 
zation of  ecclesiastical  property. 

3.  Abolition  of  national  debt. 

4.  Universal  military  service  on  the  part  of  the  people. 

5.  Communal  independence  in  police  and  local  affairs. 

B.  Economic. 

1.  One  day  of  rest  in  the  week  under  legal  regulation. 
Limitation  of  working  day  to  eight  hours  for  adults.  Pro- 
hibition of  the  labour  of  children  under  fourteen,  and  limit- 
ation of  work  hours  to  six  for  young  persons  between  fourteen 
and  sixteen. 

2.  Legal  fixing  of  minimum  wages  every  year  in  accordance 
with  the  price  of  provisions. 

3.  Equality  of  wages  of  male  and  female  labour. 

4.  Scientific  and  technical  training  for  all  children,  as  well 
as  their  support  at  the  expense  of  society  as  represented  by 
the  State  and  the  Communes. 

6.  Support  of  the  aged  and  infirm  by  society. 

6.  Prohibition  of  all  interference  on  the  part  of  employers 
with  the  management  of  the  relief  and  sustentation  funds  of 
the  working  classes,  to  whom  the  sole  control  of  these  funds 
should  be  left. 

7.  Employers'  liability  guaranteed  by  deposit  by  employers 
proportioned  to  number  of  workmen. 

8.  Participation  of  the  workmen  in  drawing  up  factory 
regulations.     Abolition   of    employer's    claim    to   punish    the 


50  Contemporary  Socialisju. 

labourer  by  fines  and  stoppages  (according  to  resolution  of  the 
Commune  of  27tb  April,  1871). 

9.  Revision  of  all  agreements  by  which  public  property  has 
b?en  alienated  (banks,  railways,  mines,  etc.).  The  management 
of  all  State  factories  to  be  committed  to  the  workmen  em- 
ployed in  them. 

10.  Abolition  of  all  indirect  taxes,  and  change  of  all  direct 
ones  into  a  progressive  income  tax  on  all  incomes  above  3,000 
francs. 

11.  Abolition  of  the  right  of  inheritance,  except  in  the  line 
of  direct  descent,  and  of  the  latter  in  the  case  of  fortunes  above 
20,000  francs. 

At  the  congress  of  the  party  held  at  St.  Etienne  two  years  after 
this  programme  was  adopted,  M.  Brousse,  a  medical  practi- 
tioner in  Paris,  and  a  member  of  the  Town  Council,  who  had 
already  shown  signs  of  disputing  the  leadership  of  M.  Guesde, 
carried  by  a  vote  of  thirty-six  to  twenty-seven  a  motion 
for  introducing  some  modifications,  and  the  minority  seceded 
and  set  up  a  separate  organization.  In  spite  of  repeated  efibrts 
at  reconciliation,  the  two  sections  of  the  French  socialists 
have  never  united  again  or  been  able  even  to  work  together 
temporarily  at  an  election.  Besides  personal  jealousies, 
there  are  most  important  differences  of  tendency  keeping  them 
apart.  The  Guesdists  accept  the  policy  of  Karl  Marx  as 
well  as  his  economic  doctrine :  the  universal  revolution,  and 
the  centralized  socialist  State,  as  well  as  the  theory  of  surplus 
value  and  the  right  to  the  full  product  of  labour.  The 
Broussists,  on  the  other  hand,  believe  in  decentralization, 
and  would  prefer  municipalizing  industries  to  nationalizing 
them.  They  are  for  giving  the  commune  control  of  its  own 
police,  its  own  soldiers,  its  own  civil  administration,  its  own 
judiciary  ;  and  they  think  the  regime  of  collective  property  can 
be  best  brought  in  and  best  carried  on  by  local  bodies.  They 
would  have  the  towns  take  over  their  own  gas,  light,  and  water 
supply,  their  omnibus  and  tramway  traffic ;  but  they  would 
have  them  take  over  also  many  of  the  common  industries 
which  never  tend  towards  monopoly  or  even  call  for  any 
special  control.  They  would  municipalize,  for  example,  the 
bakehouses  and  the  mealshops  and  the  granaries,  apparently 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     51 

as  supplying  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  they  would  have 
various  other  branches  of  industry  undertaken  by  the  towns  to 
a  certain  limited  extent,  in  order  to  provide  suitable  work  for 
the  unemploj'-ed.  Then  in  1887  they  added  a  fresh  plank 
to  their  platform,  and  asked  for  the  establishment  by  munici- 
pahties,  on  public  money  or  credit,  of  productive  associations  to 
be  owned — not,  like  the  other  undertakings,  by  the  munici- 
pality, but — by  the  working  men  employed  in  them.  This  is 
a  reappearance  of  the  old  policy  of  Lassalle,  with  the  differ- 
ence that  the  productive  associations  are  to  be  founded  on 
municipal  and  not  on  State  credit ;  and  the  reappearance  is  not 
surprising  in  France,  because  co-operative  production  has,  on 
the  whole,  been  more  successful  in  that  country  than  in  any 
other.  Then  another  of  their  demands  is,  that  all  public 
contracts  should  be  subjected  to  such  conditions  as  to  wages 
and  hours  of  labour  as  the  workmen's  syndicates  approve ;  and 
in  Paris  they  have  already  succeeded  in  obtaining  this  con- 
cession from  the  Town  Council  so  far  as  municipal  contracts 
are  concerned.  These  workmen's  syndicates  are  trade  unions, 
which  aim  only  at  bettering  the  position  of  their  members 
without  theoretical  prepossessions,  but  are  quite  as  bold  in 
their  demands  on  the  public  powers  as  the  socialists,  and 
apparently  more  successful.  In  1885  their  claims  included,  not 
only  an  eight  hours'  day  and  a  normal  rate  of  fair  wages,  but 
the  fixing  of  all  salaries  under  500  francs,  a  credit  to  themselves 
of  500,0(X),000  francs,  and  the  gratuitous  use  of  empty  houses 
by  their  members ;  and  in  1886  they  obtained  from  the  Town 
Council  of  Paris  a  furnished  room,  with  free  lighting  and  firing, 
and  a  subvention  of  20,000  francs,  for  the  establishment  of  a 
Labour  Bureau,  to  be  a  centre  for  all  working-class  delibera- 
tions and  intelligence,  and  a  registry  for  the  unemployed. 

The  socialism  of  the  Broussists  is  thus  practically  a  muni- 
cipal socialism :  municipal  industries,  municipal  credit  for 
working  men's  productive  associations,  municipal  concessions  to 
trade  unions ;  but  all  this  seems  to  the  Guesdists  to  be  mere 
tinkering,  to  be  no  better  than  the  possibilities  of  the  Repub- 
lican Socialist  Alliance,  and  they  have  for  that  reason  given 
their  rivals  the  name  of  Possibilists,  which  for  distinction's 
sake   they   still   commonly   bear.     Neither   section   had    any 


52  Contemporary  Socialism. 

representative  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  till  1889,  when  the 
Broussists  succeeded  in  returning  M.  Joftrin  ;  but  the  Broussists 
have  nine  in  the  Town  Council  of  Paris.  The  Guesdists 
have  more  men  of  culture  among  them;  Guesde  himself  and 
Lafargue,  Karl  Marx's  son-in-law,  are  both  men  of  ability 
and  public  position ;  but  they  have  a  smaller  following, 
and  what  they  have  is  on  the  decline.  Their  sympathy  with 
the  principles  of  German  Socialism,  their  alliance  with  the 
German  Socialist  party  is  against  them,  for  the  French  working 
men  have  a  very  honest  hatred  of  the  Germans,  both  from 
recollections  of  the  war  and  from  the  pressure  of  German 
industrial  competition ;  and  the  feeling  seems  to  be  returned 
by  the  Germans,  for  it  appeared  even  among  the  socialists  at 
the  recent  congress  at  Halle,  international  and  non-patriotic 
as  socialists  often  claim  to  be.  One  of  the  personal  accusa- 
tions that  disturbed  the  sittings  of  that  congress  was,  that  the 
leaders  of  the  party  had  been  discovered  in  secret  conference 
with  the  delegates  of  the  French  socialists,  MM.  Guesde  and 
Ferroul,  who  had  been  sent  to  greet  their  German  comrades. 

The  Possibilists  have  no  very  eminent  members,  the  most 
leading  persons  among  them  being  Brousse  himself  and  MM. 
Allemane  and  Joffrin.  But  they  are  not  inconsiderable  in  num- 
ber, and  they  are  growing.  They  have  400  Circles  of  Social 
Studies  all  over  the  country,  organized  into  six  regions,  each 
with  its  regular  regional  congress,  and  all  working  under  a 
national  executive  committee  and  a  general  national  congress, 
meeting  once  a  year.  The  future  of  French  socialism  seems 
to  be  with  the  Possibilists  rather  than  the  Guesdists  ;  and  the 
future  of  the  Possibilists,  like  the  future  of  the  German  socialists, 
seems  to  lie  in  the  direction  of  releasing  their  limbs  from  the 
dead  clothes  of  socialist  theory,  in  order  to  take  freer  and  more 
practical  action  for  the  positive  wellbeing  of  the  working  class. 
At  the  recent  congress  of  the  Possibilists  at  Chatellerault  in 
October,  1890,  the  chief  questions  discussed  were  the  reform 
the  system  of  poor  relief  and  the  eight  hours'  day.  They 
want  an  international  eight  hours'  day,  but  they  would  be 
willing  to  allow  other  four  hours'  overtime,  to  be  paid  for  by 
double  wages. 

In  1835  the  two  divisions  of  socialists  combined  for  elec- 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     5  3 

tioneering  purposes  witli  one  another  and  with  a  third  revolu- 
tionary body  called  the  Blanquists,  and  they  actually  formed 
together  an  organization  known  as  the  Revolutionary  Union  ; 
but  the  three  parties  quarrelled  again  before  the  election,  and 
the  union  was  dissolved.  The  Blanquists  are  disciples  of  the 
veteran  conspirator  Blanqui,  and  include  some  well-known 
men,  such  as  General  Eudes,  and  MM.  Vaillant  and  Roche. 
They  are  revolutionists  pure  and  simple,  and  in  some  respects 
stand  near  the  anarchists ;  only,  being  old  birds,  they  move 
about  more  cautiously,  and  indeed  are  sometimes  for  that 
reason — and  because  they  act  as  intermediaries  between  other 
revolutionaries — called  the  "  diplomatists  of  lawlessness." 
With  all  their  love  for  revolution,  however,  they  have  more  than 
the  usual  democratic  aversion  to  war,  and  their  chief  work  at 
present  is  in  connection  with  the  league  they  have  founded 
against  permanent  armies. 

Although  revolutionary  socialism  is  so  ill  represented  in  the 
French  Legislature,  there  is  a  special  parliamentary  party, 
known  as  the  Socialist  Group,  which  was  founded  by  nine- 
teen deputies  in  1887,  and  returned  thirty  candidates  to  the 
Chamber  at  the  election  of  1889.  They  are  for  communal 
autonomy  ;  for  the  transformation  of  industrial  monopolies  into 
public  services,  to  be  directed  by  the  respective  companies 
under  the  control  of  the  public  administration ;  and  for  the 
progressive  nationalization  of  property,  so  as  to  make  the 
individual  employment  of  it  accessible  to  free  labourers ;  and 
they  have  no  lack  of  other  planks  in  their  platform :  inter- 
national federation  and  arbitration ;  abolition  of.  standing 
armies  ;  abolition  of  capital  punishment ;  universal  suffrage  ; 
minority  representation ;  sexual  equality ;  free  education, 
primary,  secondary,  and  technical ;  suppression  of  the  budget 
of  public  worship ;  separation  of  Church  and  State ;  absolute 
liberty  to  think,  speak,  write,  meet,  associate,  and  contract; 
abohtion  of  indirect  taxes  and  customs,  and  introduction  of 
a  progressive  income  tax,  and  a  progressive  succession  duty ; 
public  creches;  establishment  of  superannuation,  sick  and 
accident  insurance  at  public  expense.  Among  the  deputies 
who  signed  the  programme  in  1887  were  the  two  Boulangists, 
MM.  Laisant    and    Laur,  and  MM.    Clovis   Hughes,  Basley, 


54       ,  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Bower,  etc.  The  idea  of  the  party  seems  to  be  what  M. 
Laisant  recommends  in  his  "  L'Anarchie  Bourgeoise,"  pub- 
lished in  the  same  year  1887,  a  Republican  Socialist  party, 
which,  accepting  the  good  works  of  socialism,  without  caring 
for  its  political  or  economic  theory,  shall  do  its  best  to  abolish 
misery  by  any  means  open  to  it  under  the  existing  repub- 
lican form  of  government.  Republican  socialism  corresponds 
therefore  to  what  is  called  State  socialism  in  Germany — the 
abolition  of  poverty  by  means  of  the  power  of  the  present  State ; 
and  the  question  between  socialists  and  other  reformers  is 
narrowing  in  France,  as  elsewhere,  into  a  question  of  the  justice 
and  the  suitability  of  the  individual  measures  proposed. 

There  is  also  a  body  of  Christian  Socialists  in  France, 
of  whom,  however,  I  shall  have  more  to  say  in  a  subsequent 
chapter  on  the  Christian  Socialists. 

Socialism  crossed  very  early  from  Prussia  into  Austria  and 
took  quick  root  among  the  German-speaking  population,  but 
has  never  to  this  day  made  much  way  among  any  of  the 
other  nationalities  in  the  Empire.  The  Magyars  are,  on  the 
whole,  fairly  comfortable  and  contented  in  their  worldly  cir- 
cumstances, and  they  have  a  strong  national  aversion  to  any- 
thing German,  even  a  German  utopia  ;  so  that  they  lent  no  ear 
to  the  socialist  agitation  till  1880,  when  a  socialist  congress 
of  119  delegates  was  held  at  Buda  Pest  and  founded  the 
Hungarian  Labour  Party.  The  agitation,  however,  has  not 
assumed  any  important  dimensions.  The  Poles  of  Austria, 
like  the  Poles  of  Russia  and  the  Poles  of  Prussia,  have  all 
along  been  a  source  of  much  disappointment  to  socialist 
leaders,  who  expected  they  would  leap  into  the  arms  of  any 
revolutionary  scheme,  but  find  them  too  pre-occupied  with 
their  own  nationalist  cause  to  care  for  any  other.  The  same 
observation  applies  to  the  Czechs.  They  are  Czechs  and 
Federalists  first,  and  a  social  system  under  which  they  would 
cease  to  be  Czechs  and  Federalists,  and  become  mere  atoms 
under  a  powerful  centralized  government,  led  possibly  by 
Germans,  is  naturally  not  much  to  their  fancy.  But  in  the 
German-speaking  part  of  the  monarchy  socialism  has  found 
a  ready  and  general  welcome,  and  has  latterly  grown  most 
popular  in  the  anarchist  form.     This  development  is  due  to 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     55 

various  causes.  The  federalist  ideas  prevalent  in  the  country 
would  be  a  bridge  to  the  general  principles  of  anarchism, 
while  the  coercive  laws  in  force  since  1870  would  naturally 
provoke  a  recourse  to  revolutionary  methods  and  an  impatience 
with  the  sober  and  Fabian  policy  of  the  Austrian  Social  Demo- 
crats. The  Social  Democrats  of  Austria  were  advised  from 
the  first  by  Von  Schweitzer  and  Liebknecht,  the  leaders  of 
German  socialism  at  the  time,  to  adopt  this  temporizing 
policy,  as  being  on  the  whole  the  best  for  the  party  in  the 
circumstances  existing  in  their  country.  They  were  advised 
to  give  a  general  support  at  the  elections  to  the  Liberal  party, 
because  nothing  could  be  done  for  sociahsm  in  Austria  till  the 
priestly  and  feudal  ascendancy  was  abolished,  and  that  could 
only  be  done  by  strengthening  the  hands  of  the  Liberals. 
They  have  continued  to  observe  this  moderate  course.  Unlike 
their  German  comrades,  they  looked  with  favourable  eyes  on 
the  labour  legislation  introduced  by  Government  for  improving 
the  condition  of  the  working  classes  ;  and  though  they  have 
suffered  from  coercive  legislation  much  longer  and  sometimes 
quite  as  severely,  they  have  never  struck  the  qualification  "  by 
legal  means"  out  of  their  principles,  but,  on  the  contrary,  have 
declared,  when  they  were  permitted  to  hold  a  meeting — as  for 
example  at  Briinn  in  1884 — that  they  adhered  entirely  and 
exclusively  to  peaceful  methods,  and  repudiated  the  deeds  of 
the  anarchists.  But  then  they  are  apparently  not  prospering 
in  number,  while  the  anarchists  are.  For  one  thing  they  have 
never  had  good  leaders,  and  though  they  sometimes  invite 
Liebknecht  or  one  of  the  German  socialist  leaders  to  come 
and  rouse  them.  Government  has  always  refused  liberty  for 
such  addresses  to  be  delivered  in  Austria.  The  anarchists,  on 
the  other  hand,  had  an  energetic  and  eloquent  leader  in  Peukert, 
a  house-painter,  who  is  now  a  chief  personage  in  anarchist 
circles  in  London,  and  from  here  no  doubt  still  carries  on 
relations  with  his  old  friends ;  and  their  propaganda  seems  to 
be  spreading,  if  we  judge  from  the  political  trials,  and  from  the 
fresh  measures  of  repression  directed  against  it  in  1 88-4,  when 
Vienna  was  put  under  siege,  and  again  in  the  latter  part  of 
1888.  They  have  nine  or  ten  newspapers,  and  the  socialists  six 
or  seven.    Neither  faction  has  any  representative  in  Parhament. 


56  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Both  parties  direct  their  chief  attention  to  the  peasantry, 
especially  where  any  germ  of  an  agrarian  movement  happens 
already  to  prevail.  The  Galician  agitation  against  great 
landlords  in  1886  was  fomented  by  anarchist  emissaries,  and 
we  occasionally  hear  of  anarchist  operations  among  the  people 
of  Northern  Bohemia  or  Styria  as  well  as  in  Upper  Austria, 
where  rural  discontent  has  long  been  more  or  less  acute. 
Austria  is  mainly  an  agricultural  country ;  but  greater  part  of 
the  land  is  held  in  very  large  estates  by  the  clergy  and 
nobility,  and  the  evils  of  the  old  feudal  regime  are  only  now 
being  gradually  removed.  There  are,  it  is  true,  as  many  as 
1,700,000  peasant  proprietors  in  the  Cisleithanian  half  of  the 
Empire  alone;  but  then  their  properties  are  seriously  en- 
cumbered by  the  debt  of  their  redemption  from  feudal  servi- 
tudes and  by  the  severity  of  the  public  taxation.  The  land 
tax  amounts  to  26  per  cent,  of  the  proprietor's  income,  and  the 
indirect  taxes  on  articles  of  consumption  are  numerous  and 
burdensome.  But  three-fourths  of  the  rural  population  are 
merely  farm  servants  or  day  labourers,  and  are  worse  off  even 
than  the  same  class  elsewhere.  The  social  question  in  Austria 
is  largely  agrarian,  but  the  spontaneous  movements  of  the 
Austrian  peasantry  seem  rather  unlikely  to  run  in  harness  with 
social  democracy.  Unions  of  free  peasants  for  example  have 
sprung  up  of  recent  years  in  various  provinces.  Their  great  aim 
is  to  procure  a  reduction  in  the  taxes  paid  by  the  peasantry ; 
but  then  they  add  to  their  programme  the  principle  of  State- 
help  to  labour,  the  abolition  of  all  feudal  privileges  and  all 
rights  of  birth,  gratuitous  education,  and  cessation  of  the 
policy  of  contracting  national  debt,  and  they  speak  vaguely 
about  instituting  a  peasant  State,  and  requiring  every  ministej: 
and  responsible  official  to  serve  an  apprenticeship  to  peasant 
labour  as  a  qualification  for  office,  in  order  that  he  may  under- 
stand the  necessities  and  capacities  of  the  peasantry.  This 
idea  of  the  peasant  State  is  analogous  to  the  idea  of  the  labour 
State  of  the  Social  Democrats ;  but  of  course  this  is  agree- 
ment which  is  really  conflict.  It  is  hke  the  harmony  between 
Sforza  and  Charles  VIII. :  "  I  and  my  cousin  Charles  are 
wonderfully  at  one  ;  we  both  seek  the  same  thing — Milan." 
The  class  interest  of  the  landed  peasant  is  contrary  to  the 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism,     57 

class  interest  of  tlie  working  man,  and  would  be  invaded  by 
social  democracy.  The  peasantry  are  simply  fighting  for 
their  own  hand,  and  as  their  votes  are  courted  by  both 
political  parties  they  will  probably  be  able  to  secure  some 
mitigation  of  their  grievances.  Distress  is  certainly  serious 
among  them  when,  as  happened  a  few  years  ago,  in  a  parish 
of  135  houses  as  many  as  35  executions  were  made  in  one  day 
for  failure  to  pay  taxes,  and  in  another  of  250  houses  as  many 
as  72  ;  but  on  the  whole  there  seems  to  be  little  of  that  hope- 
less indigence  which  appears  among  the  peasant  proprietary 
in  countries  where  the  practice  of  unrestricted  or  compulsory 
subdivision  of  holdings  exists,  or  has  recently  existed,  to  any 
considerable  extent. 

There  is  an  influential  Catholic  Socialist  movement  in  Austria, 
led  by  the  clergy  and  nobility,  and  dealing  in  an  earnest 
spirit  with  the  social  question  as  it  appears  in  that  country. 

Socialism  was  introduced  into  Italy  in  1868  by  Bakunin, 
who,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  Mazzini,  gained  wide  accept- 
ance for  his  ideas  wherever  he  went,  and  founded  many 
branches  of  the  International  in  the  country,  which  survived 
the  extinction  of  the  parent  society,  and  continued  to  bear  its 
name.  They  were,  like  Bakunin  himself,  anarchist  in  their 
social  and  political  views,  and  were  marked  by  an  especial 
violence  in  their  attacks  on  Church  and  State  and  family. 
They  published  a  great  number  of  journals  of  various  sorts, 
and  kept  up  an  incessant  and  very  successful  propaganda ;  but 
no  heed  was  paid  them  by  the  authorities  till  1878,  when  an 
attempt  on  the  life  of  the  king  led  to  a  thorough  examination 
being  instituted  into  the  whole  agitation.  The  dimensions 
and  ramifications  of  the  movement  were  found  to  be  so  much 
more  extensive  than  any  one  in  power  had  anticipated,  that 
it  was  determined  to  set  a  close  watch  thereafter  on  all 
its  operations,  and  its  meetings  and  congresses  were  then 
from  time  to  time  proclaimed.  But  after  the  passing  of  the 
Franchise  Act  of  1882,  a  new  socialist  movement  came  into 
being  which  looked  to  constitutional  methods  alone.  The 
franchise  was  not  reduced  very  low :  it  only  gave  a  vote  to 
one  person  in  every  fourteen,  while  in  England  one  in  six 
has  a  vote ;  but  the  reduction  was  accompanied  with  scrutin 


58  Contemporary  Socialism. 

de  liste  and  the  ballot,  and  it  was  felt  that  something  could 
now  be  done.  Accordingly  a  new  Socialist  Labour  Party  was 
formed  on  the  usual  Marxist  lines,  under  the  leadership  of  a 
very  capable  man,  an  orator  and  a  good  organizer,  Andrea 
Costa,  who  was  formerly  an  anarchist.  This  party  obtained 
60,000  votes  at  the  first  subsequent  election,  and  returned  two 
candidates  to  the  Legislature,  one  of  them  being  Costa.  In 
1883  it  formed  a  working  alliance  with  the  Italian  Democratic 
Society — an  active  working-class  body  of  which  Costa  was  a 
leading  member ;  and  in  1884  it  entered  into  an  incorporating 
union  with  another  working-class  body,  the  Lombardy  Labour 
Federation,  which  had  a  large  number  of  local  branches. 
"With  their  help  it  had  become,  in  1886,  an  organization  of  133 
branches,  and  Government  resolved  to  suppress  it.  Most  of 
the  branches  in  the  north  of  Italy  were  dissolved,  and  their 
funds,  flags,  and  libraries  confiscated.  But  the  party  is  still 
active  over  the  country.  They  returned  three  members  at  the 
late  election  in  November,  1890.  The  growth  of  this  party 
was  even  more  displeasing  to  the  anarchists  than  to  the 
Government,  and  in  1882  they  called  back  Maletesta,  one  of 
their  old  leaders,  from  abroad,  to  conduct  a  regular  campaign 
over  the  whole  kingdom  against  Costa,  and  to  denounce  every 
man  for  a  traitor  to  the  socialist  cause  who  should  take  any 
manner  of  part  in  parliamentary  elections,  or  show  the  smallest 
sign  of  reconciliation  to  the  existing  order  of  things.  His 
campaign  ended  in  his  arrest  in  May,  1883,  and  the  condem- 
nation of  himself  and  53  comrades  to  several  years'  imprison- 
ment for  inciting  to  disturbance  of  the  public  peace.  Besides 
their  contentions  with  the  Socialist  Labour  Party,  the  Italian 
anarchists  are  much  given  to  contending  among  themselves, 
and  split  up,  even  beyond  other  parties  of  the  kind,  upon 
trifles  of  doctrine  or  procedure.  But  however  divided  they 
may  be,  socialists  and  anarchists  in  Italy  are  all  united  in 
opposing  the  new  social  legislation  of  the  Government. 
When  the  Employers'  Liability  Bill  was  introduced,  Costa 
declared  that  legislation  of  that  kind  was  utterly  useless  so 
long  as  the  people  were  denied  electoral  rights,  because  till 
the  franchise  was  reduced  far  enough  to  give  the  people  a 
real  voice  in  public   affairs,   there  could  be  no  security  for 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialisin.     59 

the  loyal  and  faithful  execution  of  the  provisions  of  such  an 
act. 

The  Italian  socialists  andanarchists  have  always  had  a  lively 
brood  of  journals,  which,  however,  are  generally  shorter  lived 
than  even  socialist  organs  elsewhere ;  but  when  one  dies  for 
want  of  funds  to-day,  another  comes  out  in  its  place  to-morrow. 
This  remarkable  fertility  in  journals  seems  to  be  due  to  the 
large  literary  proletariat  that  exists  in  Italy — the  unemployed 
educated  class  who  could  live  by  their  pen  if  they  only  had  a 
paper  to  use  it  in.  Through  their  presence  among  the  socialists 
new  journals  are  pushed  forward  without  sufficient  funds  to 
carry  them  on,  and  as  the  people  are  too  poor  to  subscribe  to 
them,  and  the  party  too  poor  to  subsidize  them,  they  soon  come 
to  a  natural  termination. 

»  The,  development  of  socialism  in  Italy  is  no  matter  of  sur- 
prise. Though  there  is  no  great  industry  in  the  country,  the 
whole  population  seems  a  proletariat.  There  is  a  distressed 
nobility,  a  distressed  peasantry,  a  distressed  working  class,  a 
distressed  body  of  university  men.  Mr,  Gallenga  says  that  for 
six  months  of  the  year  Italy  is  a  national  workshop ;  everybody 
is  out  of  employment,  and  has  to  get  work  from  the  State ; 
and  he  states  as  the  reason  for  this,  that  the  employing  class 
wants  enterprise  and  ability,  and  are  apt  to  look  to  the  Govern- 
ment for  any  profitable  undertakings.  The  Government,  how- 
ever, are  no  better  financiers  than  the  rest,  and  the  state  of  the 
public  finances  is  one  of  the  chief  evils  of  the  country.  Taxa- 
tion is  very  heavy,  and  yet  property  and  life  are  not  secure. 
"  The  peasants,"  saj's  M.  de  Laveleye,  "  are  reduced  to  extreme 
misery  by  rent  and  taxation,  both  alike  excessive.  Wages  are 
completely  inadequate.  Agricultural  labourers  live  huddled  in 
hoiirgades,  and  obtain  only  intermittent  employment.  There 
is  thus  a  rural  proletariat  more  wretched  than  the  industrial. 
Excluded  from  property  by  latifundia^  it  becomes  the  enemy 
of  a  social  order  that  crushes  it."  The  situation  is  scarcely 
better  in  parts  of  the  country  which  are  free  from  latifundia. 
In  Sicily  most  of  the  agricultural  population  live  on  farms 
owned  by  themselves ;  but  then  these  farms  are  too  small  to 
support  them  adequately,  and  their  occupiers  scorn  the  idea  of 
working  for  hire.     There  are  as  many  nobles  in  Sicily  as  in 


6o  Contemporary  Sociahsm. 

England,  and  Mr.  Dawes  (from  whose  report  on  Sicily  to  the 
Foreign  Office  in  1872  I  draw  these  particulars  states)  that  25 
per  cent,  of  the  lower  orders  are  what  he  terms  drones — idlers 
who  are  maintained  by  their  wives  and  children.  In  Italy 
there  is  little  working-class  opinion  distinct  from  the  agri- 
cultural. There  are  few  factories,  and  the  artisans  who  work 
in  towns  have  the  habit  of  living  in  their  native  villages  near 
by,  and  going  and  coming  every  day  to  their  work.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  persons  engaged  in  manufactures  do  so,  or  at 
least  go  to  their  rural  homes  from  Saturday  till  Monday. 
Their  habits  and  ways  of  thinking  are  those  of  agriculturists, 
and  the  social  question  of  Italy  is  substantially  the  agricultural 
labourers'  question.  The  students  at  the  universities,  too,  are 
everywhere  leavened  with  socialism.  The  advanced  men 
among  them  seem  to  have  ceased  to  cry  for  a  republic,  and  to 
place  their  hope  now  in  socialism.  They  have  no  desire  to 
overturn  a  king  who  is  as  patriotic  as  the  best  president,  and 
they  count  the  form  of  government  of  minor  importance  as 
compared  with  the  reconstitution  of  property.  Bakunin 
thought  Italy  the  most  revolutionary  country  of  Europe  except 
Spain,  because  of  its  exceptionally  numerous  body  of  enthusi- 
astic young  men  without  career  or  prospects ;  and  certainly 
revolutionary  elements  abound  in  the  peninsula,  but,  as  M.  de 
Laveleye  shrewdly  remarks,  a  revolution  is  perhaps  next  to 
impossible  for  want  of  a  revolutionary  metropolis.  "  The 
malaria,"  he  says,  "  wliich  makes  Rome  uninhabitable  for  part 
of  the  year  will  long  preserve  her  from  the  danger  of  becoming 
the  seat  of  a  new  commune." 

In  Spain,  as  in  Italy,  socialism  made  its  first  appearance  in 
1868  through  the  agency  of  the  International,  and  found  an 
immediate  and  warm  response  among  the  people.  In  1873  the 
International  had  an  extensive  Spanish  organization  with 
300,000  members  and  674  branches  planted  over  the  whole 
length  and  breadth  of  the  country,  from  industrial  centres 
like  Barcelona  to  remote  rural  districts  like  the  island  of 
Majorca.  M.  de  Laveleye  was  present  at  several  sittings  of 
these  socialist  clubs  when  he  visited  Spain  in  1869,  and  he 
says :  "  They  were  usually  held  in  churches  erected  for  wor- 
ship.    From  the  pulpit  the  orators  attacked  all  that  had  pre- 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.    6 1 

viously  been  exalted  there — Grod,  religion,  the  priests,  the  rich. 
The  speeches  were  white  hot,  but  the  audience  remained  calm. 
Many  women  were  seated  on  the  ground,  working,  nursing 
their  babes,  and  listening  attentively  as  to  a  sermon.  It  was 
the  very  image  of  '93."  He  adds  that  their  journals  wrote  with 
unparalleled  violence,  especially  against  religion  and  the  Church. 
On  the  division  of  the  International  in  1872  the  Spanish 
members  sided  with  Bakunin,  supporting  the  anarchist  view  of 
the  government  of  the  future.  This  was  natural  for  Spaniards, 
among  whom  their  own  central  government  had  been  long 
thoroughly  detested,  and  their  own  communal  organization 
regarded  with  general  satisfaction.  The  Spanish  people,  even 
the  humblest  of  them,  are  imbued  beyond  others  with  those 
sentiments  of  personal  dignity  and  mutual  equality  which  are 
at  the  bottom  of  democratic  aspirations ;  and  in  their  local 
communes,  where  every  inhabitant  who  can  read  and  write  has 
a  voice  in  public  council,  they  have  for  ages  been  accustomed 
to  manage  their  own  aiffairs  with  harmony  and  advantage. 
The  revolutionary  tradition  of  Spain  has  accordingly  always 
favoured  communal  autonomy,  and  the  Federal  rather  than  the 
Central  Republic.  Castelar  declares  the  Federal  Republic  to 
be  the  most  perfect  form  of  State,  though  he  thinks  it  for  the 
present  impracticable ;  and  the  revolution  of  1873,  in  which  the 
International  played  an  active  part,  was  excited  for  the  purpose 
of  establishing  it.  The  Federal  Republicans  are  not  all  socialists. 
Many  of  them  are  for  making  the  agricultural  labourers  peasant 
proprietors,  and  even  for  dividing  the  communal  property 
among  them ;  but  in  a  country  like  Spain,  where  communal 
property  exists  already  to  a  large  extent,  the  idea  of  making 
all  other  property  communal  property  lies  ever  at  hand  as  a 
ready  resource  of  reformers.  Nor,  again,  are  all  Spanish 
socialists  federalists.  There  is  a  Social  Democratic  Labour 
part}'  in  Spain  which  broke  off  from  the  anarchists  in  1882, 
and  published  a  programme  more  on  Marxist  lines,  demanding 
(1)  the  acquisition  of  poUtical  power ;  (2)  the  transformation 
of  all  private  and  corporate  into  the  common  property  of  the 
nation ;  and  (3)  the  reorganization  of  society  on  the  basis  of 
industrial  associations.  This  body  is  not  very  numerous,  but 
at  one  of  its   recent   congresses    it   had   delegates   from    152 


62  Contemporary  Socialism. 

different  branches,  and  it  has  for  the  last  four  years  had  a 
party  organ,  El  Socialista,  in  Madrid. 

The  bulk  of  Spanish  socialism  still  belongs,  however,  to  the 
anarchist  wing.  Little  has  been  heard  of  the  anarchists  in 
Spain  since  the  revolution  of  1873  and  the  fall  of  the  Inter- 
national. They  have  usually  been  blamed  for  the  attempts  on 
the  life  of  the  king  in  1878,  but  they  have  certainly  never 
resorted  to  those  promiscuous  outrages  which  have  formed  so 
much  of  the  recent  policy  of  the  anarchists  of  other  countries ; 
and  except  for  participation  in  a  few  demonstrations  of  the 
unemployed,  they  have  maintained  a  surprisingly  quiet  and 
unobtrusive  existence.  In  1881  they  reconstituted  themselves 
as  the  Spanish  Federation  of  the  International  Working  Men's 
Association,  which  is  said  by  the  author  of  "  Socialismus  und 
Anarchismus,  1883-86,"  apparently  on  their  own  authority,  to 
have  70,000  members  in  all  Spain,  who  are  distributed  in  800 
branches,  and  hold  regular  district  and  national  congresses, 
but  always  under  cover  of  secrecy.  They  have  two  journals 
in  Madrid,  and  others  in  the  larger  towns  elsewhere.  They 
are  sorely  divided  into  parties  and  schools  on  very  petty  points, 
and  fierce  strife  rages  between  the  tweedledums  and  tweedle- 
dees.  One  party  has  broken  away  altogether  and  established 
a  society  of  its  own,  under  the  name  of  the  Autonomists.  The 
anarchists  are  in  close  alliance  with  an  agrarian  organization 
called  the  Rural  Labourers'  Union,  which  has  agitated  since 
1879  for  the  abolition  of  latifundia  in  Andalusia,  but  they  always 
disclaim  all  connection  with  the  more  notorious  Andalusian 
society,  the  Black  Hand,  which  committed  so  many  outrages 
in  1881  and  1882,  and  is  often  identified  with  the  anarchists. 
The  Black  Hand  is  a  separate  organization  from  the  anarchists, 
and  has,  it  is  said,  40,000  members,  mostly  peasants,  in  Anda- 
lusia and  the  neighbouring  provinces ;  but  their  principles  are 
undoubtedly  socialistic.  Their  views  are  confined  to  the 
subject  of  land ;  but  they  declare  that  land,  like  all  other 
property,  has  been  made  by  labour,  that  it  therefore  cannot  in 
right  belong  to  the  idle  and  rich  class  who  at  present  own  it, 
and  that  any  means  may  be  legitimately  employed  to  deprive 
this  class  of  usurpers  of  their  possessions — the  sword,  fire, 
slander,  perjury. 


The  Pi'ogTess  and  Present  Position  of  Socialis7n.     6 


o 


In  Spain,  unlike  most  other  countries,  the  artisans  of  the 
towns  show  less  inclination  to  socialistic  views  than  the  rural 
labourers.  They  have  an  active  and  even  powerful  labour 
movement  of  their  own,  carried  on  through  an  extensive 
organization  of  trade  unions  which  has  risen  up  rapidly 
within  the  last  few  years,  especially  in  Catalonia,  and  they 
put  their  whole  trust  in  combination,  co-operation,  and  peace- 
ful agitation  for  gradual  reform  under  the  present  order  of 
things,  and  will  have  nothing  to  say  to  socialism  or  anarchism  ; 
so  much  so,  that  they  manifested  the  greatest  reluctance  to 
join  in  the  eight  hour  demonstrations  of  May-day,  1890,  be- 
cause they  did  not  wish  to  be  confounded  or  in  any  way 
identified  with  the  more  extreme  faction  who  were  getting 
those  demonstrations  up ;  and  they  actually  held  a  rival  demon- 
stration of  their  own  on  Sunday,  the  4th  of  May,  "  in  favour," 
as  they  stated  in  the  public  announcement  of  it,  "  of  State 
socialism  and  of  State  legislation,  both  domestic  and  inter- 
national, to  improve  the  general  condition  of  the  working 
classes  without  any  revolutionary  or  sudden  change  that  could 
alarm  the  Sovereign  and  the  governing  classes." 

Spain  made  a  beginning  in  factory  legislation  in  1873,  when 
an  act  was  passed  restricting  the  labour  of  children  and  young 
people ;  but  the  act  remained  dead-letter  till  1884,  when  the 
renewal  of  agitation  on  the  social  question  by  the  various 
parties  led  the  cabinet  to  issue  an  order  to  have  this  law  carried 
into  effect,  and  a  little  later  in  the  same  year  to  appoint  a 
royal  commission  to  institute  a  thorough  inquiry  into  the 
whole  circumstances  of  the  labouring  classes,  and  the  conditions 
of  their  improvement.  This  commission,  which  received 
nothing  but  abuse  from  the  anarchists,  who  said  the  labour 
problem  must  be  settled  from  below  and  not  from  above, 
was  welcomed  very  heartily  by  the  trade  unionists,  and  with 
favour  rather  than  otherwise  even  by  the  Social  Democrats ; 
but  it  has  as  yet  had  Httle  or  no  result,  and  men  who  know 
the  country  express  their  opinion  very  freely  that  it  will  never 
lead  to  anything  but  an  act  or  two  that  will  remain  dead-letter 
like  their  predecessors.  The  suffrage  is  high,  only  one  person 
in  seventeen  having  a  vote ;  and  working-class  legislation  will 
continue  lukewarm  till  the  working  class  acquires  more  real 


64  Conte?nporary  Socialism. 

political  power.  A  leading  Spanish  statesman  said  lately : 
"  The  day  for  social  questions  has  not  yet  come  in  Spain,  and 
we  can  afiford  to  look  on  and  see  other  countries  make  experi- 
ments which  may  be  of  use  some  day  when  our  politicians  and 
thinkers  can  find  time  to  devote  attention  to  these  twentieth 
century  problems." 

There  seems  much  truth  in  the  view  that  socialism,  spite  of 
the  alarm  its  spread  caused  to  the  Spanish  Government  in  1872, 
is  really  a  disease  of  a  more  advanced  stage  of  industrial 
development  than  yet  exists  in  Spain,  and  therefore  unlikely 
to  grow  immediately  into  anything  very  formidable  there. 
The  country  has  few  large  industrial  centres.  Two-thirds  of 
the  people  are  still  engaged  in  agriculture ;  and  though  it  is 
among  the  agricultural  classes  socialism  has  broken  out,  the 
outbreak  has  been  local,  and  confined  to  provinces  where  the 
conditions  of  agricultural  labour  are  decidedly  bad.  But  these 
conditions  vary  much  from  province  to  province.  In  the 
southern  provinces  the  cereal  plains  and  also  the  lower  pastur- 
ages are  generally  possessed  by  large  proprietors,  who  work 
them  by  farmers  on  the  metayer  principle,  with  the  help  of 
bands  of  migratory  labourers  in  harvest  time ;  but  in  the  moun- 
tainous parts  of  these  provinces  the  estates  belong  for  the 
most  part  to  the  communes.  They  are  usually  large,  and  as 
every  member  of  the  commune  has  an  undivided  right  of  using 
them,  he  is  able  to  obtain  from  them  the  main  part  of  his 
living  without  rent.  Many  of  the  inhabitants  of  such  districts 
engage  in  the  carrying  trade,  to  which  they  conjoin  a  little 
cattle-dealing  as  opportunities  offer ;  and  as  they  are  sober  and 
industrious,  they  are  usually  comparatively  well  off.  In  the 
northern  provinces  the  situation  is  in  some  respects  better. 
Land  is  much  subdivided,  and  though  the  condition  of  the 
labouring  class  is  not  as  a  rule  unembarrassed,  that  result  is 
due  more  to  their  own  improvidence  and  indolence  than  to 
anything  else.  A  man  of  frugal  and  industrious  habits  can 
always  rise  without  much  difficulty  from  the  position  of  day 
labourer  to  that  of  metayer  tenant,  and  from  tenancy  to  pro- 
prietorship, and  some  of  the  small  proprietors  are  able  to  amass 
a  considerable  competency.  Besides,  even  the  improvident  are 
saved  from  the  worst  by  the  communal  organization.     They 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     65 

have  always  a  right  of  pasturage  on  the  commons,  and  a  right 
to  wood  for  fire,  house  and  furniture,  and  they  get  their  chil- 
dren's education  and  medical  attendance  in  sickness  gratui- 
tously on  condition  of  giving  six  days'  labour  at  the  roads  of  the 
commune.  The  most  active  and  saving  part  of  the  population, 
north  and  south,  is  the  class  of  migratory  workmen,  who  stay  at 
home  only  during  seed-time  and  harvest,  and  go  for  the  rest  of 
the  year  to  work  in  Castile,  Andalusia,  or  Portugal,  as  masons 
or  carpenters,  or  waiters,  and  always  come  back  with  a  store  of 
money.  Sometimes  they  remain  abroad  for  a  year  or  two,  and 
sometimes  they  go  to  Cuba  or  Mexico  for  twenty  years,  and 
return  to  settle  on  a  property  of  their  own  in  their  native 
village.  This  class  iorm.sth.Q  personnel  of  the  small  property  in 
Spain,  and  they  give  by  their  presence  a  healthy  stimulus  to 
the  neighbourhoods  they  reside  in.  The  small  property  is  in 
Spain,  as  elsfewhere,  too  often  turned  from  a  blessing  to  a  curse 
by  its  subdivision,  on  the  death  of  the  proprietor,  among  the 
members  of  his  family,  who  in  Spain  are  usually  numerous, 
though  it  is  interesting  to  learn  that  in  some  of  the  Pyrenean 
valleys  it  has  been  preserved  for  five  hundred  years  by  the 
habit  of  integral  transmission  to  the  eldest  child — son  or 
daughter — coupled  with  the  habit  of  voluntary  celibacy  on  the 
part  of  many  of  the  other  children.  The  economic  situation 
of  Spain,  then,  is  not  free  from  defects ;  but  there  always  exists 
a  wide  margin  of  hope  in  a  country  where,  as  Frere  said,  "  God 
Almighty  has  so  much  of  the  land  in  His  own  holding,"  and 
its  economic  situation  would  not  of  itself  be  likely  to  pre- 
cipitate social  revolution. 

From  Spain,  socialism  passed  into  Portugal;  but  from 
the  first  it  has  worked  very  quietly  there.  Its  adherents 
formed  themselves  into  an  association  in  1872,  and  held  con- 
gresses, published  newspapers,  started  candidates,  and  actively 
promoted  their  views  in  every  legitimate  way.  Their  pro- 
gramme was  anarchism,  like  that  of  their  Spanish  allies ; 
but,  unlike  anarchists  elsewhere,  they  repudiated  all  resort 
to  violence,  for,  as  M.  de  Laveleye  says,  they  are  naturally 
"less  violent  than  the  Spaniards,  the  economic  situation  of 
the  country  is  better,  and  liberty  being  very  great,  prevents  the 
explosion  of  popular  fury,  which  is  worse  when  exasperated  by 


66  Contemporary  Socialism. 

repression."  Portugal  is  an  agricultural  country  in  a  good 
climate,  where  the  people  have  few  wants,  and  find  it  easy  to 
satisfy  them  fairly  well.  In  the  absence  of  any  manner  of 
acute  discontent,  socialism  could  never  have  been  much 
better  than  an  abstract  speculation ;  and  Portuguese 
socialism,  if  we  may  trust  the  complaints  made  by  the  partj'' 
elsewhere,  seems  now  to  have  lost  even  the  savour  it  had. 
In  March,  1888,  one  of  the  socialist  newspapers  of  London 
reported  that  the  Portuguese  working  men's  movement  had, 
in  the  course  of  the  preceding  ten  years,  given  up  the  straight- 
forward socialist  character  it  once  had ;  that  its  leaders  had 
entered  into  compromises  with  other  political  parties,  and 
threw  themselves  too  much  into  experiments  in  co-operation  ; 
that  the  party  press  was  very  lukewarm  in  its  socialism,  and 
inclined  more  to  mere  Radicalism  ;  and  that  one  or  two  attempts 
that  had  been  made  to  start  more  extreme  journals  had 
completely  failed  ;  but  it  announced  with  satisfaction,  that  at 
last,  in  January,  1888,  a  frankly  anarchist  paper  was  published 
at  Oporto — A  Eevoluzao  Social.  About  the  same  time  the 
editor  of  a  journal  which  had  made  some  hostile  remarks  on 
anarchism  was  shot,  and  anarchists  were  blamed  and  arrested 
for  the  deed.  There  was  a  Socialist  Congress  at  Lisbon  in 
1882,  composed  of  twelve  delegates  representing  eight  societies, 
all  in  Lisbon  or  Oporto, 

While  the  socialist  cause  has  been  thus  rather  retreating  in 
the  south  of  Europe,  it  has  been  making  some  advances  in  the 
north.  Of  the  three  Scandinavian  countries,  Denmark  alone 
gave  any  early  response  to  the  socialist  agitation ;  but  there 
are  now  socialist  organizations  in  Sweden  and  Norway,  and 
the  movement  in  Denmark  has  assumed  considerable  dimen- 
sions. Attempts  were  made  to  introduce  socialism  into 
Norway  as  far  back  as  1873  by  Danish  emissaries,  and  the 
International  also  founded  a  small  society  of  thirty-seven 
members  in  Christiania ;  but  the  society  seems  to  have  died, 
and  nothing  more  was  heard  of  socialism  there  till  the  com- 
motion in  favour  of  a  Republic  in  1883.  A  Social  Democratic 
Club  was  then  established  in  Christiania,  and  a  Social 
Democratic  Congress  was  held  at  Arendal  in  1887  ;  but  even 
yet  Norwegian  social  democracy  is  of  so  mild  a  chaiacter  that 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.    6"] 

it  would  be  counted  conservatism  by  Social  Democrats  else- 
where, for  this  Congress  issued  a  programme  for  a  new  labour 
party  without  a  word  of  socialism  in  it,  and  merely  asking  for 
a  normal  working  day,  for  factory  legislation  and  reform  of 
taxation.  In  Sweden  there  is  more  appearance  of  agitation, 
because  there  is  one  very  active  agitator  in  the  country,  Palm, 
a  tailor,  who  keeps  socialism  en  evidence  by  making  stump 
speeches,  or  getting  up  street  processions  with  the  usual  red 
flags,  and  sometimes — such  was  the  easy  indifference  of  the 
Government  to  his  work  at  first — with  a  military  band  in  full 
uniform  at  the  head  of  them.  The  Swedish  socialists  had 
four  newspapers  in  188S,  but  three  of  them  were  confiscated 
by  the  Government  in  December  of  that  year,  and  their  editors 
arrested  for  offences  against  religion  and  the  throne.  In  May, 
1890,  they  held  their  first  Congress  at  Stockholm,  when  dele- 
gates appeared  from  twenty-nine  unions ;  but  the  movement 
is  very  unimportant 'in  Sweden  and  Norway,  and  the  chief 
conditions  of  success  seem  wanting  to  it  in  those  countries. 
There  is  no  class  of  labourers  there  without  property;  no 
town  residuum,  and  no  rural  cottagers.  There  being  few  great 
manufacturers  in  the  kingdom,  only  fifteen  per  cent,  of 
the  people  altogether  live  in  towns.  The  rest  are  spread 
sparsely  over  the  rural  districts  on  farms  belonging  to  them- 
selves, and  in  the  absence  of  roads  are  obliged  to  make  at 
home  many  of  the  ordinary  articles  of  consumption.  What 
with  the  produce  of  their  small  properties  and  their  own 
general  handiness,  they  are  unusually  independent  and  com- 
fortable. M.  de  Laveleye  considers  them  the  happiest  people 
in  Europe. 

The  circumstances  of  Denmark  are  different.  The  operatives 
of  the  town  are  badly  off.  Mr.  Strachey  tells  us  in  his  report 
to  the  Foreign  Office  in  1870  that  every  fourth  inhabitant  of 
Copenhagen  was  in  receipt  of  parochial  relief  in  1867,  and  he 
saj^s  that  while  the  Danish  operatives  are  sober  and  well 
educated,  they  fail  in  industry  and  thrift.  "  No  fact  in  my 
report,"  he  states,  "is  more  certain  than  that  the  Dane  has 
j'et  to  learn  the  meaning  of  the  word  work;  of  entireness 
and  thoroughness  he  has  seldom  any  adequate  notion.  This 
is  why  the  Swedish  artisan  can  so  often  take  the  bread  from 


68  Contemporary  Socialism. 

his  moutli."  In  the  rural  districts,  too,  the  economic  situa- 
tion, though  in  some  respects  highly  favourable,  is  attended  by 
a  shadow.  The  land  is,  indeed;  widely  diffused.  There  are  in 
all  280,000  families  in  the  rural  districts  of  Denmark,  and 
of  these  170,000  occupy  independent  freeholds,  30,000  farm 
hired  land,  and  only  26,000  are  agricultural  labourers  pure  and 
simple.  Seven-eighths  of  the  whole  country  is  held  by  peasant 
proprietors,  and  as  a  rule  no  class  in  Europe  has  improved 
more  during  the  last  half  century  than  the  Danish  peasant  or 
Bonde.  Mr.  Strachey  says :  "  The  Danish  landlord  was  till 
recent  times  the  scourge  of  the  peasantry.  Under  his  paternal 
■  care  the  Danish  Bonde  was  a  mere  hewer  of  wood  and  drawer 
of  water ;  his  lot  was  no  better  than  that  of  the  most  miserable 
ryot  of  Bengal.  The  Bonde  is  now  the  freest,  the  most  politi- 
cally wise,  the  best  educated  of  European  yeomen."  But 
there  is  another  side  to  the  picture.  In  Denmark,  as  in  other 
places  where  the  small  property  abounds',  the  property  is  often 
too  small  for  the  proprietor's  necessities,  and  there  thus  arises 
a  kind  of  proprietor-proletariat,  unwilling  to  part  with  their 
land  and  unable  to  extract  a  living  out  of  it.  This  class,  along 
with  the  rural  labourers  who  have  no  property,  constitute  a 
sort  of  fourth  estate  in  the  country,  and  there  as  elsewhere  their 
condition  is  preparing  a  serious  social  question  for  the  future. 
Then,  among  the  influences  favourable  to  the  acceptance  of 
socialism  in  Denmark,  must  be  counted  the  fact  that  one  of 
the  two  great  political  parties  of  the  country  is  democratic. 
Curiously  enough  that  party  consists  of  the  peasantry,  and  the 
Conservatives  of  Denmark  are  the  commercial  classes  of  the 
towns,  with  the  artisans  in  their  wake,  their  Conservatism, 
however,  being  substantially  identical  with  the  Liberalism  of 
the  same  classes  in  other  countries.  This  democratic  party 
seeks  to  make  everything  in  the  State  conduce  to  the  interests 
of  the  peasantry,  and  keeps  alive  in  the  country  the  idea  that 
the  State  exists  by  the  will  of  the  people,  and  for  their  good 
alone. 

The  International  was  introduced  into  this  exclusively 
Protestant  country  by  two  militant  Eoman  Catholics — Pio,  a 
retired  military  officer,  who  came  to  Denmark  as  religious 
tutor  to  a  baroness  who  had  joined  the  Church  of  Rome,  and 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism,     69 

Geleff,  who  wrote  for  an  Ultramontane  journal.  Tliey  pursued 
their  new  mission  with  great  zeal  and  success.  They  opened 
branches  of  the  association  in  most  of  the  towns,  started  a 
party  newspaper,  held  open-air  meetings,  were  sent  to  im- 
prisonment for  sedition  in  1873,  and  on  their  release  in  1877 
absconded  to  America  with  the  whole  of  the  party  funds, 
and  disputed  bitterly  there  over  the  spoil.  While  they  were 
in  prison,  the  International  was  suppressed  in  Denmark ;  but 
the  members  merely  reconstituted  the  organization  under  the 
name  of  the  SociaHst  Labour  Party,  and  the  place  of  leader 
was  taken  for  a  time  by  an  authoress,  Jacquette  Lilyenkrantz, 
for,  as  in  other  countries,  women  are  in  Denmark  among  the  most 
active  propagandists  of  socialism.  They  kept  up  communica- 
tions with  the  sociahst  leadei'S  in  Germany,  and  the  meeting 
of  the  German  Socialist  Congress  at  Copenhagen  in  1883  gave 
the  movement  a  new  impetus.  They  were  able  to  return  two 
deputies.  Holm  and  Hordun,  to  the  Volkething  in  1884,  and 
they  took  part,  80,000  strong,  in  the  Copenhagen  procession 
of  1886,  in  commemoration  of  the  fundamental  law  of  the 
State.  Their  chief  party  organ,  the  Social  DemoJcraten,  has 
a  circulation  of  26,000  daily,  one  of  the  largest  newspaper 
circulations  in  Denmark;  and  there  are  other  four  socialist 
journals  in  the  kingdom. 

They  belong  to  the  moderate  wing  of  social  democracy,  being 
opposed  to  revolution  and  terrorism,  and  placing  their  confi- 
dence in  constitutional  agitation.  Their  programme  is  sub- 
stantially that  of  Gotha — the  right  of  the  labourers  to  the  full 
product  of  labour,  State  management  of  all  industry,  free 
education,  universal  suffrage,  normal  working  day,  abolition 
of  class  inequalities,  single  chamber  in  legislature,  free  justice, 
no  standing  army.  State  provision  for  sick  and  aged,  religions 
to  be  a  private  affair.  They  turn  their  propaganda  with  most 
hope  to  the  land  proletariat ;  and  a  recent  writer,  P.  Schmidt, 
in  an  interesting  paper  in  the  Arbeiterfreund  for  1889,  says 
they  are  succeeding  in  their  mission,  and  that  socialism  is 
spreading  more  and  more  every  day  among  the  rural  labourers. 
At  their  last  Congress,  held  at  Copenhagen,  in  June,  1890,  and 
attended  by  seventy-one  delegates  from  fifty-four  different 
branches,  their  attention  was  chiefly  occupied  with  questions 


70  Contemporary  Socialism, 

about  the  land  ;  provision  of  more  land  for  the  people  by  com- 
pulsory acquisition  of  ecclesiastical  property  and  uncultivated 
ground ;  State  advances  of  capital  to  agricultural  labourers ; 
agricultural  schools ;  better  housing  for  farm  servants,  etc.  In 
1887  they  held  a  socialist  exhibition  in  Copenhagen — an  inter- 
national exhibition  of  socialist  pamphlets,  newspapers,  books, 
magazines,  and  pictures;  and  in  1890  they  returned  two 
members  to  the  Landthing — the  first  time  they  secured  repre- 
sentatives in  the  Upper  Chamber. 

Belgium  has  many  of  the  conditions  of  soil  most  favourable 
for  socialism — a  dense  population,  large  towns,  an  advanced 
productive  system,  and  an  industrial  class  at  once  very  nu- 
merous, very  ill  paid,  and  very  open,  through  their  education, 
to  new  social  ideas.  For  a  time,  accordingly,  socialism  spread 
remarkably  in  that  country.  The  International  had  eight 
federations  of  branches  in  1869,  with  60,000  members  and 
several  newspapers.  In  the  dispute  between  Marx  and  Bakunin, 
the  Belgian  Internationalists  seem  to  have  sided  as  a  body  with 
Bakunin ;  but  they  presently  fell  out  among  themselves,  and,  in 
spite  of  many  repeated  efforts  at  reconciliation,  they  have  never 
since  succeeded  in  composing  their  differences.  The  German 
socialist  leaders  tried  to  reorganize  them  in  1879  at  a  special 
Congress  at  Brussels,  under  the  name  of  the  Socialist  Labour 
Party  of  Belgium,  and  with  the  Gotha  programme  ;  but  they 
were  rent  again  in  1881  by  a  division  which  had  then  entered 
into  German  socialism  itself.  The  majority  of  the  party  adhered 
to  Liebknecht  and  Bebel ;  but  an  active  minority,  composed 
chiefly  of  Walloons,  followed  the  anarchist  views  of  Most  and 
Hasselman,  withdrew  from  the  party,  and  founded  another  called 
the  Revolutionary  Union.  The  anarchists  have  one  journal — 
Isi  Dieu,  Ni  Maitre — violent,  as  the  name  indicates,  but  obscure 
and  unimportant ;  but  they  believe  most  in  the  less  intellectual 
propaganda  of  deed,  and  make  themselves  conspicuous  from 
time  to  time  by  dynamite  explosions  and  street  fights  with 
the  police  or  the  military,  or  their  own  sociaHst  rivals.  The 
Belgian  socialists,  on  the  other  hand,  look  more  to  constitutional 
and  parliamentary  action,  and  usually  work  with  the  Liberals  at 
the  elections  ;  but  the  Belgian  voting  qualification  is  high,  and 
they  have  never  succeeded  in  returning  a  candidate  of  their 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     7 1 

own.  In  1887  their  candidate  for  Brussels  gob  1,000  votes, 
while  his  successful  rival  had  3,000.  They  took  an  active  part 
in  the  Republican  agitation  which  was  raissd  by  the  School 
Law  in  1881,  They  have  capable  leaders,  and  they  publish 
two  journals,  which,  however,  for  want  of  funds,  appear  only  at 
distant  and  uncertain  intervals.  They  have  lately  begun  to 
hold  many  open-air  meetings,  which  the  authorities  had  long 
forbidden,  and  thsy  held  an  International  Sociajlist  Exhibition 
at  Ghent  in  1837  like  that  held  in  the  same  year  at  Copen- 
hagen. 

On  the  whole  socialism,  after  twenty  years'  work,  is  making 
no  way  in  Belgium,  notwithstanding  the  favourable  character 
of  the  soil,  because  the  labour  movement  is  choosing  other 
directions  and  forms  of  organization.  Trade  unions  and  co-opera- 
tive societies  have  been  multiplying  much  during  these 
twenty  years,  and  in  1885  a  strong  Balgian  Labour  Party 
was  formed,  with  120  branches  and  100,000  members,  which 
aims  at  promoting  the  practical  wellbeing  of  the  working  class 
by  remedial  legislation — by  in  some  cases  vicious  State-social- 
istic legislation,  it  may  be — but  has  no  word  of  the  right  to 
the  full  product  of  labour,  of  the  nationalization  of  all  industry, 
or  of  the  social  revolution.  One  of  the  items  of  the  programme 
is  worded  "  collective  property  " ;  but  whether  it  contemplates 
the  universal  State-property  of  collectivism  or  the  corporate 
property  of  co-operation  does  not  appear.  The  other  items  are 
universal  suffrage,  direct  legislation  by  the  people  (presumably 
the  referendum)^  free  undenominational  education,  abolition  of 
standing  army,  abolition  of  budget  of  worship,  normal  work 
day,  normal  wages,  regulation  of  work  of  women  and  children, 
factory  inspection,  employers'  liability,  workmen's  chambers, 
courts  of  conciliation,  repeal  of  taxes  on  means  of  subsistence, 
increased  income  tax,  international  labour  legislation.  M.  de 
Laveleye  attributes  the  ill  success  of  socialism  in  Belgium, 
and  no  doubt  rightly,  to  the  influence  of  discussion  and  free 
institutions.  Government  has  left  it  to  stand  or  fall  on  its  own 
merits  before  public  opinion.  The  socialists  enjoy  full 
liberty  of  the  platform  and  press ;  they  can  hold  meetings 
and  congresses  and  form  clubs  in  any  town  they  please,  and 
the  result  is  that  though  the  movement,  like  all  new  move- 


72  Contemporary  Socialism. 

ments,  made  a  certain  impression  and  advance  for  a  time  at 
first,  it  got  checked  under  tlie  influence  of  discussion  and  the 
application  of  soHd  practical  judgment.  Then,  though  the 
Belgian  Legislature  has  not  yet  done  what  it  can  and  ought  for 
ameliorating  the  condition  of  the  labourers,  philanthropy  has 
been  very  active  and  useful  in  a  number  of  ways  in  that  king- 
dom. The  Catholic  Church  has  always  intervened  to  keep  up 
a  high  ideal  of  employers'  responsibility — the  old  ideal  of  a 
patriarchal  care ;  and  there  is  a  strong  organization  in  Belgium 
of  Cathohc  "Working  Men's  Clubs,  which  were  formed  into  one 
body  in  1867,  which  were  united  with  the  Cathohc  Working 
Men's  Clubs  of  Germany  in  1869,  and  with  those  of  France 
in  1870,  and  which  now  constitute  with  these  the  Interna- 
tional Catholic  Working  Men's  Association. 

It  ought  perhaps  to  be  mentioned  that  there  is  an  old  but 
small  party  of  Land  Nationalizers  in  Belgium,  the  Colinsian 
Socialists,  whose  principles  have  been  warmly  endorsed  by 
Mr.  Euskin  as  "forming  the  most  complete  system  of  social  and 
political  reform  yet  put  forward."  They  want  the  State  to  own 
all  the  soil,  and  let  it  out  by  auction  ;  but  they  are  opposed 
to  nationalizing  any  of  the  other  instruments  of  production. 

In  Holland,  wealth  is  very  unequally  divided,  wages  are  low, 
and  taxation,  being  largely  indirect,  falls  heavily  on  the 
working  class ;  but  the  people  are  phlegmatic,  domestic, 
religious,  and  contrive  on  small  means  to  maintain  a  general 
appearance  of  comfort  and  decency.  Above  all,  they  enjoy 
free  institutions ;  and,  under  freedom,  socialism  has  run  the  same 
course  in  Holland  as  jn  Belgium.  The  International  made 
rapid  advances  in  1869,  founded  branches  in  all  the  towns, 
and  carried  on,  after  the  Paris  Commune,  so  active  and  success- 
ful an  agitation  that  the  bourgeoisie  took  alarm,  and  Government 
imposed  some  restrictions  on  the  disaffected  press.  But  a 
general  rise  in  wages  happened  about  the  time,  a  strong  co- 
operative movement  was  promoted  under  the  lead  of  the  ortho- 
dox divines,  a  lively  polemic  against  sociaUsm  broke  out  among 
the  working  men  themselves,  and  all  interest  in  the  social  revo- 
lution seemed  to  have  died  away,  when,  in  1878,  it  was  revived 
again  by  D.  Niewenhuis,  a  retired  Protestant  minister,  a  man 
of  capacity  and  zeal,  who  has  been  unwearied  in  his  advocacy 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialisjn.     73 

of  the  cause  ever  since.  He  started  in  that  year  a  journal, 
Recht  Voor  Allen,  which  is  still,  I  believe,  the  only  socialist 
organ  in  Holland,  and  appears  now  three  times  a  week  ;  and 
he  founded  the  Social  Democratic  Union  in  1884,  which 
is  strongest  in  the  Hague  and  Amsterdam,  but  has  branches 
in  most  of  the  other  towns,  and  a  membership  by  no  means 
inconsiderable,  though  much  below  the  old  numbers  of 
the  Dutch  International.  After  being  imprisoned  in  1837  for 
pohtical  reasons,  Niewenhuis  was  returned  to  the  Legis- 
lature in  1888 — the  first  socialist  who  has  sat  there.  The 
Dutch  Socialists,  to  increase  their  numbers,  enrol  a  class  of 
"  secret "  members,  timid  spirits  who  will  only  come  to  them 
"  by  night,  for  fear  of  the  Jews."  There  is  also  a  handful  of 
anarchists  in  Holland,  who  have  a  newspaper  in  Amsterdam, 
and  are  said  to  live  harmoniously  with  the  socialists,  and,  accord- 
ing to  the  reports  of  the  American  consuls,  nobody  in  the 
country  thinks  any  liarm  of  either. 

Switzerland  has  swarmed  for  a  century  with  conspirators 
of  all  hues  and  nations  ;  but  the  Swiss — thanks  again  to  free 
institutions — have  been  steel  against  revolution.  The  "  Young 
Germanys  "  and  "  Young  Italys  "  whom  she  sheltered  in  the 
past  sought  only,  it  is  true,  to  win  for  their  own  countries  the 
political  freedom  which  Switzerland  already  enjoyed ;  but  the 
socialist  and  anarchist  refugees  of  the  last  twenty  years  have 
had  social  principles  to  preach  which  were  as  new  and  as  good 
for  the  Swiss  as  for  their  own  countrymen ;  and,  speaking  as 
they  did  the  languages  of  the  Confederation,  they  have  never 
ceased  making  active  efforts  for  the  conversion  of  the  Swiss. 
The  old  Jurassian  Federation  of  the  International,  still  con- 
tinues to  exist  in  French-speaking  Switzerland,  and  to  bear 
witness  for  the  extremest  kind  of  anarchist  communism — no 
force  or  authority  whatever,  and  a  collective  consumption  of 
products  as  well  as  a  collective  production ;  but  this  body  is  not 
increasing,  and  though  Guesde,  the  French  socialist,  made  a 
lecturing  tour  through  that  division  of  Switzerland  in  1885,  he 
had  quite  as  little  success  for  his  branch  of  the  revolutionary 
cause.  There  are  numbers  of  Social  Democratic  Clubs  in  the 
German-speaking  cantons,  but  they  consist  mainly  of  German 
refugees,  and  contain  few  native  Swiss  members.     After  the 


74  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Anti-Socialist  Laws  of  1879,  the  German  socialists  settled  largely 
in  Switzerla*nd.  They  transferred  to  Zurich  their  part}-  organ, 
the  Social  Democrat^  and  along  with  it,  to  use  their  own  phrase, 
the  entire  Olympus  of  the  party,  the  body  of  writers  and 
managers  who  moved  the  shuttle  of  its  operations.  These 
propagandists  naturally  did  not  neglect  the  country  of  their 
adoption,  but  used  every  opportunity  to  forward  their  agitation 
by  addresses  and  even  by  extended  missionary  journeys,  and  a 
separate  Swiss  Social  Democratic  party  was  actually  founded, 
with  a  separate  organ,  the  Arheiterstimme  ;  but  it  collapsed  in 
1884  from  internal  dissensions.  No  attempt  was  made  to  revive 
it  till  1888,  when  the  action  of  the  Federal  Council  in  May 
against  the  foreign  socialists  resident  in  the  Confederation  led 
to  the  organization  of  a  Swiss  socialist  party  in  October.  The 
Federal  Government  had  already,  in  1884  and  1885,  taken 
measures  against  the  political  refugees,  especially  the  an- 
archists, who  were  thought  to  have  abused  the  hospitality  they 
received  by  planning  and  preparing  in  Switzerland  the  series  of 
crimes  which  shocked  all  Europe  in  18-84,  and  even  by  trying  to 
explode  the  Federal  Palace  at  Berne  itself.  The  Government 
instituted  an  inquiry,  and  finding  the  country  absolutely 
riddled  with  anarchist  clubs,  determined  to  keep  the  eye  of 
the  police  on  them,  and  in  the  meantime  expelled  thirty  or 
forty  of  their  leading  members  from  Switzerland  altogether. 
These  were  almost  without  exception  either  Austrians  or 
Germans,  and  included  Neve,  now  a  leading  anarchist  in 
London.  The  Russian  anarchists  were  apparently  not  thought 
so  dangerous,  their  great  occupation  being  to  invent  new  ways 
and  means  of  smuggling  newspapers  into  Russia  ;  but  they 
disliked  the  police  supervision  to  which  they  were  subjected, 
and  very  generally  quitted  Switzerland  of  their  own  accord 
for  London  or  Paris.  The  anarchist  organ,  the  Revolte,  was 
removed  at  the  same  time  to  Paris,  but  its  place  in  Geneva 
was  taken  by  a  new  paper — VEgalitaire.  In  1888  the  police 
were  ordered  to  report  all  socialist  meetings  held  in  the  country, 
and  all  arrivals  or  departures  of  "foreigners  whose  means  of 
subsistence  was  unknown,  and  whose  presence  might,  for 
other  reasons,  become  dangerous  to  the  safety  of  the  country"; 
and  as  this  further  turn  of  the  screw  was  believed  to  be  made 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     75 

on  the  instigation  of  Germany,  it  provoked  considerable  oppo- 
sition, one  result  of  which  "was  the  formation  of  the  new 
Swiss  socialist  party. 

This  party,  however,  is  not  an  affair  of  any  magnitude,  and 
does  not  appear  very  likely  to  become  so ;  for  the  working  men  of 
Switzerland  have  the  public  power  in  their  own  hands  alreadj'', 
and  they  have  their  own  organizations  besides  to  look  after 
their  interests  ;  and  while  they  are  by  no  means  averse  to  the 
use  of  the  powers  of  the  State,  they  are  disposed  to  move  with 
inquiry  and  caution,  and  to  see  every  step  of  their  way  before 
running  into  speculative  schemes  of  foreign  origin.  Their 
political  position  satisfies  them,  because  they  know  they  are 
too  strong  for  Government  to  neglect  their  wishes,  because 
some  labour  laws  have  already  been  passed  for  their  protection, 
and  because  the  authorities  always  show  themselves  ready 
to  entertain  any  new  proposals  for  the  same  object,  as,  for 
example,  they  did  in  May,  1890,  by  summoning  an  Inter- 
national Congress  at  Berne  to  discuss  the  length  of  the  work- 
ing day  and  other  conditions  of  labour. 

Their  economic  position,  moreover,  is  also  comparatively 
satisfactory  for  various  reasons,  among  which  Mr.  Bonar,  in  his 
report  to  the  Foreign  Office  in  1870,  gives  a  chief  place  to 
the  general  working  of  democratic  institutions  and  the  preva- 
lence of  benevolent  and  charitable  associations.  "In  enumerat- 
ing," he  says,  "the  favourable  circumstances  in  which  the  Swiss 
working  man  is  placed,  prominence  must  be  given  to  the  im- 
mense extension  of  the  principle  of  democracy,  which,  whatever, 
may  be  its  defects  and  dangers  from  a  political  point  of  view 
when  pushed  to  extremes,  serves  in  Switzerland  in  its  econo- 
mical effects  to  advance  the  cause  of  the  operative  by  removing 
the  barriers  dividing  class  from  class,  and  to  establish  among 
all  grades  the  bonds  of  mutual  sympathy  and  goodwill,  further 
strengthened  by  a  widely-spread  network  of  associations  or- 
ganized with  the  object  of  securing  the  common  interests  and 
welfare  of  the  people."  Masters  and  workmen  are  socially 
more  equal  than  in  most  European  countries ;  they  sit  side  by 
side  at  the  board  of  the  Communal  Council,  they  belong  to  the 
same  choral  societies,  they  refresh  themselves  at  the  same 
cafes.     In  most  cantons,  too,  operatives  are  either  owners  of,  or 


76  Contemporary  Socialism. 

hold  from  tlie  comnnines,  small  pieces  of  land  wliicli  they  cul- 
tivate in  their  leisure  hours,  and  which  thus  serve  them  when 
work  gets  slack  or  fails  altogether.  The  favourable  rural  eco- 
nomy of  the  country  is  well  known ;  its  peasant  proprietors 
rival  those  of  France.  The  Swiss  societies  of  beneficence  are 
remarkable,  and  almost  suggest  the  hope  that  the  voluntary 
socialism  of  a  more  enlarged  and  widely  organized  system  of 
charity  may  be  found  to  furnish  a  substantial  solution  of  the 
social  question.  Every  canton  of  Switzerland  has  its  society  of 
public  utility,  whose  aims  take  an  extensive  range ;  it  gives 
the  start  to  projects  of  improvement  of  every  description, 
infant  schools,  schools  of  design,  savings  banks,  schemes  for 
the  poor,  the  sick,  the  dumb,  singing  classes,  halls  for  Sunday 
recreation,  popular  lectures,  workmen's  houses,  protection  of 
animals,  even  industrial  undertakings  which  promise  to  be 
ultimately  beneficial,  though  they  may  not  pay  at  first.  The 
society  of  Basle  has  900  members  and  a  capital  of  £6,000,  and 
the  Swiss  Society  of  Public  Utility  is  an  organization  for  the 
whole  Republic,  which  holds  an  annual  congress  at  Zurich, 
and  general  meetings  in  the  different  cantons  by  turns.  These 
meetings  pass  off  with  every  mark  of  enthusiasm,  and  gather 
together  men  of  all  religious  and  political  opinions  in  a  common 
concern  for  the  progress  and  prosperity  of  the  masses.  One  of 
the  institutions  which  these  societies  have  largely  promoted  is 
what  they  call  a  hall  of  industry,  or  a  bazaar,  where  loans  may 
be  received  by  workmen  on  the  security  of  their  wages,  or  of 
goods  they  may  deposit.  A  labourer  who  has  made  any  article 
which  he  cannot  get  immediately  sold,  may  deposit  it  at  one  of 
these  bazaars,  and  obtain  an  advance  equal  to  a  fixed  propor- 
tion of  its  value,  and  if  the  article  is  sold  at  the  bazaar,  the 
proceeds  are  accounted  for  to  the  depositor,  less  the  sum 
advanced  and  a  small  charge  for  expenses.  These  institutions, 
Mr.  Bonar  says,  have  had  excellent  effects,  though  he  admits 
that  the  facilities  of  borrowing  have  led  the  working  men  in 
some  places  into  debt ;  but  they  are  at  any  rate  a  vast  im- 
provement on  the  pawnbroking  system  in  vogue  elsewhere. 
The  condition  of  Switzerland  shows  us  clearly  enough  that 
democracy  under  a  regime  of  freedom  lends  no  ear  to  socialism, 
but  sets  its  face  in  entirely  different  directions. 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     77 

The  United  States  of  America  have  done  more  for  experi- 
mental socialism  than  any  other  country.  Owenites,  Fourier- 
ists,  Icarians  have  all  established  communities  there,  but  these 
communities  have  failed  long  ago,  except  one  of  the  Icarian, 
and  the  only  other  socialist  experiments  now  existing  in 
America  are  seventy  or  eighty  rehgious  communities,  Shakers 
and  Eappists,  whose  success  has  been  due  to  their  religious 
discipline  and  their  celibacy,  and  whose  members  amount  to  no 
more  than  5,000  souls  all  told.  There  is  indeed  a  Russian  Com- 
mune in  California,  but  it  remains  a  solitary  Russian  Commune 
still,  the  "  new  formula  of  civilization,"  as  Russian  reformers 
used  to  call  it,  showing  no  sign  of  further  adoption.  Nor  has 
the  new  or  political  socialism  found  any  better  success  in  the 
States.  There  are  various  indigenous  forms  of  it — such  as 
the  agrarian  socialism  of  Mr.  Henry  George,  and  the  national- 
ism of  Mr.  E.  Bellamy — but  in  point  of  following  they  are  of 
little  importance,  and  the  socialism  of  the  American  socialist 
and  revolutionary  parties  is  a  mere  German  import,  with  as  yet 
a  purely  German  consumption.  It  has  been  pushed  vigorously 
in  the  American  market  for  twenty  years,  but  taken  singularly 
little  hold  of  the  American  taste.  There  is  one  revolutionary 
socialist  body  composed  chiefly  of  English-speaking  members, 
the  International  Workmen's  Association,  which  was  founded 
in  1881  in  one  of  the  western  states  ;  but  Mr.  Ely  says  its 
membership  would  be  generously  estimated  at  15,000,  and  it 
considers  the  great  work  of  the  present  should  be  popular  educa- 
tion, so  as  to  prepare  the  people  for  the  revolution  when  it  comes. 

The  Boston  Anarchists,  perhaps,  ought  not,  strictly  speaking, 
to  be  included  in  any  account  of  socialism,  for,  unlike  most 
contemporary''  anarchists,  they  are  not  socialist,  but  extremely 
individualist ;  but  historically,  it  is  worth  noting,  Boston  Anar- 
chism is  the  doctrine  of  a  disenchanted  socialist,  Josiah 
Warren,  who  had  lived  with  Robert  Owen  at  New  Harmony, 
and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  that  experiment  failed  because 
the  individual  had  been  too  much  sunk  in  the  community,  and 
no  room  was  left  for  the  play  of  individual  interests,  individual 
rights,  and  individual  responsibilities.  From  Owen's  commu- 
nism, Warren  ran  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  thought  it  im- 
possible to  individualize  things  too  much.     He  would  abolish 


78  Contemporary  Socialism. 

tlie  State,  and  have  the  work  of  police  and  defence  done  by 
private  enterprise,  like  any  other  service.  He  issued  some 
books,  tried  to  carry  out  his  views  by  practical  experiment, 
and,  though  they  failed,  he  has  still  a  small  band  of  believing 
disciples  at  Boston,  who  publish  a  newspaper  called  Liberty, 
but  have  no  organization  and  no  importance, 

Henry  George  and  his  followers,  too,  perhaps  ought  not  in 
strictness  to  be  classified  among  socialists.  He  would  certainly 
repudiate  such  a  classification  himself,  and  tlie  United  Labour 
Party,  which  he  founded  in  18S6  to  promote  his  views  bj^  poli- 
tical action,  expelled  the  socialists  from  membership  in  1887. 
His  actual  practical  proposal  is  nothing  more  than  a  narrow 
and  illusory  plan  of  taxation  ;  but  he  puts  it  forward  so  ex- 
pressly as  the  keystone  of  a  new  social  system,  as  the  remedy 
prescribed  by  economic  science  itself  for  the  complete  regene- 
ration of  society  and  the  simultaneous  removal  of  all  existing 
social  evils,  that  he  is  not  improperly  placed  among  Utopian 
socialists.  Does  he  not  promise  us  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth  ?  And  if  he  believes  the  State  can  call  the  new  heaven 
and  the  new  earth  into  being  by  a  mere  turn  in  the  incidence 
of  taxation,  while  most  other  contemporary  socialists  think  the 
State  must  first  pull  down  all  that  now  is  and  reconstruct  the 
whole  on  a  new  plan,  is  he,  on  account  of  this  greater  credulity 
of  his,  to  be  considered  a  more,  and  not  rather  a  less,  sober  and 
rational  speculator  than  they  ?  He  wants  to  abolish  landlord- 
ism, while  they  vant  to  abolish  landlordism  and  all  other 
capitalism  besides  ;  and  his  views  may  fairly  be  called  partial 
or  agrarian  socialism.  The  United  Labour  Party  was  founded 
mainly  to  promote  Mr.  George's  panacea  of  the  single  tax 
on  such  land  values  as  arise  from  the  growth  of  society 
apart  from  individual  exertion ;  but  it  includes  other 
articles  in  its  programme — the  municipalization  of  the  supply 
of  water,  light,  and  heat;  the  nationalization  of  all  money, 
note  issue,  post,  telegraphs,  railways,  and  savings  banks ;  re- 
duction of  the  hours  of  labour,  prohibition  of  child  labour, 
suppression  of  the  competition  of  prison  labour  with  honest 
labour ;  sanitary  inspection  of  houses,  factories,  and  mines ; 
simplification  of  legal  procedure  ;  secret  ballot ;  payment  of 
election  expenses.     The  United  Labour  Party  is  not  strong. 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.      79 

When  Mr.  George  stood  for  the  Mayoralty  of  New  York,  he 
had  68,000  votes  to  his  opponent's  90,(X)0 ;  but  he  had  on  that 
occasion  the  assistance  of  the  Socialistic  Labour  Party,  who  are 
said  by  Mr.  Ely  to  number  about  25,000  in  New  York,  and 
who  certainly  constituted  a  very  considerable  element  in  the 
United  Labour  Party,  for  they  were  expelled  at  the  Party 
Convention  only  by  a  vote  of  9-i  to  54.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr. 
Ely's  estimate  of  the  strength  of  the  socialists  is  possibly  too 
high,  for  they  ran  a  candidate  for  the  Mayoralty  of  New  York 
themselves  in  1888,  a  leading  man  of  the  party,  one  Jones,  and 
he  only  secured  2,000  votes.  However  that  may  be,  the  United 
Labour  Party  was  certainly  much  weakened  by  the  loss  of  the 
socialists,  and  they  were  disabled  entirely  in  the  following  year 
by  a  division  on  the  question  of  Free  Trade  and  the  secession 
of  Father  McGlynn  and  the  Protectionist  members. 

Nationalism  is  the  name  of  a  new  movement,  the  fruit  of  the 
remarkable  and  very  popular  novel  of  Mr.  Edward  Bellamy, 
"  Looking  Backward,"  which  may  be  said  to  be  the  latest  de- 
scription of  Utopia  as  it  now  stands  with  all  the  most  modern 
improvements.  Mr.  Bellamy  would  h9,ve  all  industry  orga- 
nized and  conducted  by  the  nation  on  the  basis  of  a  common 
obligation  of  work  and  a  general  guarantee  of  hvelihood,  all 
men  to  get  exactly  the  same  wages,  and  to  do  exactly  the  same 
quantity  of  work,  due  allowance  being  made  for  differences  in 
severity,  and  the  State  to  enlarge  indefinitely  its  free  public 
provision  of  the  means  of  common  enjoyment  and  culture. 
Mr.  Bellamy's  charming  pictures  of  the  new  country  naturally 
engendered  a  general  wish  to  be  there,  and  many  little  societies 
have  been  established  to  hasten  the  hour  ;  but  as  the  movement 
has  not  been  more  than  a  year  in  being,  little  account  can  yet 
be  given  of  its  success.  The  Nationalists  have  quite  recently 
issued  an  organ,  The  New  Nation^  which  announces  its  pro- 
gramme to  be  (1)  the  nationalization  of  post,  telegraphs,  tele- 
phone, railways  and  coal  mines ;  (2)  municipalization  of  gas 
and  water  supply,  and  the  like ;  and  (3)  the  equalization  of 
educational  opportunities  as  between  rich  and  poor,  and  the 
promotion  of  all  reforms  tending  towards  humaner,  more  fra- 
ternal, and  more  equal  conditions.  Nationalism  out  of  Utopia, 
therefore,  means  merely  a  little  State-socialism. 


8o  Contemporary  Socialism. 

The  strongest  socialist  organizations  in  the  United  States 
are  the  Socialistic  Labour  Party,  corresponding  to  the 
Social  Democrats  of  Europe,  and  the  International  Working 
People's  Association,  corresponding  to  the  anarchists ;  but 
both  are  composed  almost  exclusively  of  Germans.  There  are 
more  Germans  in  the  North  American  Republic  than  in  any 
State  of  Germany  except  Prussia  ;  and  as  many  of  them  have 
fled  from  their  own  country  for  political  reasons — to  escape 
the  conscription,  or  to  escape  prosecution  for  sedition — they 
bear  no  goodwill  to  the  old  system  of  government,  and  harbour 
revolutionary  ideas  almost  from  the  nature  of  things.  A  so- 
cialist propaganda  began  among  them  so  far  back  as  1848, 
when  Weitling,  of  whom  more  will  be  said  presently,  pub- 
lished a  socialist  newspaper ;  and  a  Socialist  Gymnastic  Union 
was  established  in  New  York  in  1850,  which  succeeded  in 
forming  a  kind  of  federal  alliance,  apparently  for  socialistic 
purposes,  with  a  number  of  other  local  German  gymnastic 
societies  throughout  the  States ;  but  though  these  societies 
still  exist,  they  seem  to  have  dropped  their  socialism.  It 
was  taken  up  again,  however,  in  1869,  by  the  International, 
which  transferred  its  General  Council  to  New  York  in 
1872,  held  congresses  from  time  to  time  in  the  country, 
and  eventually,  at  the  Newark  Convention  of  1877,  adopted 
the  name  of  the  Socialistic  Labour  Party,  with  a  programme 
formed  after  the  Gotha  lines.  The  numbers  of  the  party 
were  strengthened  in  the  years  immediately  following  by  the 
arrival  of  German  refugees,  expelled  from  their  own  land  by 
the  Socialist  Laws  ;  but  the  new  members  brought  with  them 
elements  of  dissension  which  speedily  came  to  a  head  after 
the  arrival  of  the  incendiary  spirit,  John  Most,  in  1882,  and  led, 
in  1883,  to  the  entire  separation  of  the  Anarchists  from  the 
Social  Democrats.  The  latter  held  a  separate  Congress  at 
Baltimore  in  the  latter  year,  attended  by  16  delegates,  re- 
presenting 23  branches  and  10,000  members,  and  it  reported 
that  altogether  38  branches  adhered  to  them.  The  anarchists 
held  a  Congress  at  Pittsburg,  and  formed  themselves  into  the 
International  Working  People's  Association,  with  the  follow- 
ing principles : — 

"  What  we  would  achieve  is  therefore  plainly  and  simply — 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     8 1 

"  1st.  Destruction  of  the  existing  class  nile  by  all  means  ; 
i.e.,  by  energetic,  relentless,  revolutionary,  and  international 
action. 

"  2nd.  Establishment  of  a  free  society  based  upon  co-opera- 
tive organization  of  production. 

"  3rd.  Free  exchange  of  equivalent  products  by  and  between 
the  productive  organizations  without  commerce  and  profit- 
mongery. 

"  4th.  Organization  of  education  on  a  secular,  scientific,  and 
equal  basis  for  both  sexes. 

"  6th.  Equal  rights  for  all  without  distinction  of  sex  or  race. 

"  6th.  Regulation  of  all  public  affairs  by  free  contracts 
between  the  autonomous  (independent)  communes  and  associa- 
tions resting  on  a  federalistic  basis."  (Ely's  "  Labour  Movement 
in  America,"  p.  231.) 

They  differ  from  the  Socialistic  Labour  Party,  as  this  pro- 
gramme shows,  in  their  exclusive  devotion  to  revolution,  and 
their  opposition  to  all  central  government. 

The  Socialistic  Labour  Party  has  several  newspapers,  the 
principal  being  the  Sozialist  and  the  Neu  Yorker  Volkszeitung 
of  New  York,  and  the  Tageblatt  of  Philadelphia ;  and  the 
anarchists  have  more,  the  best  known  being  Host's  notorious 
Freiheit.  Mr.  Ely  mentions  sixteen  socialist  newspapers  and 
ten  sympathizing  with  socialism,  and  says  that  the  majority 
of  these  support  the  anarchist  side.  The  anarchists,  more- 
over, have  one  journal  in  English — the  Alarm  ;  the  Socialistic 
Labour  Party  started  one  in  1883,  but  it  died.  "With  that  ex- 
ception the  press  of  both  parties  is  entirely  German,  and  neither 
party  seems  to  have  done  almost  anything  in  the  way  of  an 
English  propaganda  from  the  platform.  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Aveling 
state  that  before  they  made  their  lecturing  tour  on  the  subject 
through  the  States  in  1886,  the  American  public  had  never 
heard  socialism  preached  to  them  in  their  own  tongue  ;  yet 
books  like  Mr.  Gronlund's  "  Co-operative  Commonwealth," 
giving  a  very  effective  exposition  of  socialism,  had  already 
appeared  from  the  American  press.  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Aveling  say, 
moreover,  they  met  with  more  hostility  to  their  mission  from 
the  anarchists  than  from  any  other  source  in  America.  The 
American  people,  wliile   firmly  stamping  out  the   dynamite 

G 


82  Contemporary  Socialism, 

policy    of    tlie   anarchists,    have    naturally  nothing    to    say 
against  an  academic  propaganda  of  any  system  of  doctrine. 

The  trend  of  the  labour  movement  in  America  seems  away 
from  socialism.  That  movement  is  in  many  respects  more 
powerful  there  than  in  any  European  country.  There  are  some 
five  hundred  labour  newspapers  in  the  United  States,  and  an 
immense  number  of  trade  organizations  of  all  kinds.  Political 
power,  moreover,  both  in  the  States  and  in  the  Union,  is  in 
the  hands  of  the  working  class ;  and  that  class  has  now  very 
nearly  the  same  grievances  there  as  it  has  in  Europe,  and  the 
same  aspirations  after  a  better  order  of  things.  But  their 
tendencies  are  not  nearer  socialism,  but  further  from  it. 
They  simply  cannot  understand  people  who  tell  them  they 
have  no  power  to  work  out  their  own  salvation  under  the 
system  that  is,  and  that  nothing  can  be  done,  as  Marx  assures 
them,  until  every  capital  in  Europe  is  ready  for  a  simultaneous 
revolution  with  New  York  and  Chicago.  The  trade  unions 
accordingly  ignore  socialism.  The  Knights  of  Labour  ex- 
pressly repudiate  it,  and  in  the  course  of  a  very  long  pro- 
gramme they  hardly  make  a  demand  which  has  a  taint  even 
of  State-socialism.  This  "  Noble  Order  of  the  Knights  of 
Labour  "  is  a  general  association  of  working  men  to  promote  the 
cause  of  labour,  partly  by  their  own  efforts  and  partly  through 
the  Government.  By  their  own  efforts  they  are  to  promote 
co-operation  till,  if  possible,  it  supersedes  the  present  wages 
system  entirely;  equality  of  wages  for  men  and  women  for 
equal  work ;  a  general  eight  hours  day  through  a  general 
strike ;  and  a  system  of  arbitration  in  trade  quarrels.  From  the 
Union  Legislature  they  want  merely  a  few  general  reforms,  none 
bearing  directly  on  the  situation  of  labour,  except  the  abolition 
of  foreign  contract  labour.  The  others  are,  reform  of  the 
currency,  nationalization  of  telegraphs  and  railways,  and  the 
institution  of  banking  facilities  of  various  kinds  in  connection 
with  the  Post  Office.  From  the  State  Legislatures  they  ask 
the  reservation  of  public  lands  to  actual  settlers,  the  simpli- 
fication of  the  administration  of  justice,  factory  legislation, 
graduated  income  tax,  and  the  following  provisions  for  labour : 
weekly  payment  of  wages  in  money,  mechanic's  lien  on  the  pro- 
duct of  his  labour  for  his  wages,  compulsory  arbitration  in  trade 


The  Prcg7'ess  and  Pi'esetit  Position  of  Socialism.      8 


o 


disputes,  prohibition  of  labour  of  children  under  fifteen.  In 
1886  they  were  702.881  strong,  but  they  have  declined  sorely 
since  then.  Their  great  weapon  was  to  be  an  extension 
of  strikes  and  boycotting  beyond  what  was  possible  to  single 
trades  ;  but  it  was  found  that  this  policy  was  double-edged, 
and  caused  more  hurt  to  some  sections  of  the  working  class 
than  any  good  it  could  do  to  others ;  and  people  lost  faith 
in  the  principle  of  such  huge  miscellaneous  organizations. 
Dr.  Aveling  contends  that  the  Knights  of  Labour,  in  spite  of 
Mr.  Powderly's  disclaimer,  are  really,  though  it  may  be  un- 
consciously, socialists,  because  they  want  to  supersede  the 
wages  system,  if  they  can,  by  establishing  co-operative  insti- 
tutions without  State  aid ;  and  this,  he  holds,  "  is  pure  and 
unadulterated  socialism."  Indeed !  then  where  is  the  man 
who  is  not  a  pure  and  unadulterated  socialist  ?  and  what  need 
for  any  mission  to  the  States  to  preach  the  socialist  message 
to  the  Americans  for  the  first  time  in  their  own  tongue  ? 

England  was  the  country  last  reached  by  the  present  wave 
of  revolutionary  socialism,  although  the  system  has  been 
largely  conceived  upon  a  study  of  English  circumstances,  and 
is  claimed  to  be  peculiarly  adapted  to  them,  England  is  al- 
ternately the  hope  and  the  despair  of  Continental  socialists. 
Every  requisite  of  revolution  is  there,  and  yet  the  people  will 
not  rise.  The  yeomanry  are  gone.  The  land  has  come  into 
the  hands  of  a  few.  Industry  is  carried  on  by  great  centralized 
capital.  The  large  system  of  production  has  almost  finished 
its  work.  The  mass  of  the  people  is  a  proletariat ;  they  are 
thronged  in  large  towns  ;  every  tenth  person  is  a  pauper ;  and 
the  great  mansions  of  the  rich  cast  an  evil  shadow  into  the 
crowded  dens  of  the  wretched.  "  The  English,"  says  Eugene 
Dupont,  a  leading  member  of  the  old  International,  "  possess 
all  the  materials  necessary  for  the  social  revolution  ;  but  they 
lack  the  generalizing  spirit  and  the  revolutionary  passion." 
Any  proletariat  movement  in  which  the  English  proletariat 
takes  no  part,  said  Karl  Marx,  is  "  no  better  than  a  storm  in  a 
glass  of  water  "  ;  yet,  though  Marx  himself  resided  in  England 
for  most  of  his  life,  no  organized  attempt  was  made  to  gain 
over  the  English  proletariat  to  socialism  till  1883 — the  year  he 
died.     There  was  before  that,  indeed,  a  small  English  section  in 


84  Contemporary  Socialism. 

a  foreign  socialist  club  in  Soho  ;  and,  after  the  fall  of  the  Paris 
Commune,  hopes  were  for  a  time  entertained  of  srarting  a  serious 
socialist  movement  in  our  larger  towns;  but  these  hopes  proved 
so  delusive  that  Karl  Marx  said  more  than  once  to  Mr,  Hyndman, 
as  we  are  told  by  the  latter,  that  he  despaired  "  of  any  great  move- 
ment in  England,  unless  in  response  to  -come  violent  impetus 
from  without."  But  in  1883  a  socialist  movement  seemed 
to  break  out  spontaneously  in  England,  the  air  hummed  for  a 
season  with  a  multifarious  social  agitation,  and  we  soon  had 
a  fairly  complete  equipment  of  socialist  organizations — social 
democratic,  anarchist,  dilettante -^  which  have  ever  since 
kept  up  a  busy  movement  with  newspapers,  lectures,  debates 
speeches,  and  demonstrations  in  the  streets. 

In  1883  the  Democratic  Federation,  which  had  been  estab- 
lished two  years  before  to  promote  measures  of  Radical 
reform,  including,  among  other  things,  the  nationalization 
of  the  land,  adopted  the  socialistic  principles  of  Karl  Marx, 
and  changed  its  name  to  the  Social  Democratic  Federation. 
Its  programme  is  long,  and  includes,  besides  the  nationaliza- 
tion of  land  and  all  means  of  production,  direct  legislation 
by  the  people,  direct  election  of  all  functionaries  by  adult 
suffrage,  gratuitous  justice,  gratuitous,  compulsory,  and  equal 
education,  abolition  of  standing  armies,  Home  Rule  for  Ire- 
land, an  eight  hours  day,  State  erection  of  workmen's 
dwellings,  to  be  let  at  bare  cost,  progressive  income  tax,  pro- 
portional representation,  abolition  of  House  of  Lords,  separa- 
tion of  Church  and  State,  etc.  Its  principal  founders  were 
Mr.Wilham  Morris,  an  artist,  a  great  poet,  and  a  manufacturer 
exceptionally  excellent  in  his  arrangements  with  his  work- 
people; Mr.  H.  M.  Hyndman,  a  journalist  of  standing  and 
ability ;  Mr.  J.  Stuart  Glennie,  and  Mr.  Belfort  Bax,  both 
authors  of  repute  ;  Dr.  Aveling,  a  popular  lecturer  on  science, 
and  son-in-law  of  Karl  Marx ;  Miss  Helen  Taylor,  step-daughter 
of  John  Stuart  Mill ;  and  the  Rev.  Stewart  Headlam.  In 
January,  1884,  they  started  a  weekly  newspaper,  Justice,  and 
a  monthly  magazine,  To-Day,  both  of  which  still  appear,  and 
began  the  active  work  of  lecturing  and  founding  branches. 
But  before  the  year  was  out,  the  old  enemy  of  socialists,  the 
spirit  of  division,  entered  among  them,  and  Mr.  Morris,  with 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     8  5 

Dr.  Aveling  and  Mr.  Bax,  seceded  and  set  up  an  independent 
organization  called  the  Socialist  League,  with  a  separate 
weekly  organ,  Tlie  Commonweal.  The  difference  seems  to 
have  arisen  out  of  the  common  socialist  trouble  about  the 
propriety  of  mixing  in  current  politics.  The  same  disruptive 
tendency  has  persisted  in  the  two  parts,  and  in  the  end  of 
1890,  Mr.  William  Morris  seceded  from  the  Socialist  League 
with  his  local  following  at  Hammersmith. 

Neither  of  these  revolutionary  bodies  has  a  complete  organi- 
zation like  those  of  continental  countries.  They  have  never 
held  a  Congress,  either  national  or  provincial.  They  consist 
of  a  central  committee  in  London,  and  detached  local  groups 
in  the  provinces,  and  their  membership  is  not  accurately 
known,  but  it  is  not  extensive.  It  is  in  both  cases  declining, 
and  it  has  always  been  variable,  young  men  joining  for  a  year 
or  two,  and  then  leaving.  Their  chief  success  has  been 
among  the  miners  of  the  North  of  England,  and  they  have 
returned  three  members  to  the  School  Board  of  Newcastle. 
There  is  one  socialist  member  in  Parliament,  Mr.  Cunningham 
Graham,  but  he  has  not  been  returned  on  socialist  principles 
or  by  a  socialist  vote ;  and  hitherto  the  party  has  failed  to 
obtain  any  serious  support  at  the  elections.  At  the  election 
of  1885,  Mr.  John  Burns,  socialist  candidate  for  Nottingham, 
had  only  598  votes  out  of  a  total  poll  of  11,064,  and  Mr. 
J,  "Williams,  the  socialist  candidate  for  Hampstead,  had  only 
27  out  of  a  total  of  4,722.  Mr.  Burns,  however,  has  since 
been  returned  to  the  London  County  Council,  and  will  not 
improbably  succeed  in  being  returned  to  Parliament  at  next 
election.  He  is  a  working  engineer,  but  is  much  the  strongest 
leader  English  socialism  has  produced,  an  orator  of  great 
power,  an  excellent  organizer,  and  the  head  and  representative 
of  a  new  labour  movement  which  is  likely  to  plaj'  a  con- 
siderable part  in  the  immediate  future,  and  which  is  certainly 
fermented  with  a  good  measure  of  socialistic  leaven.  The 
New  Unionism,  as  this  movement  is  sometimes  called,  repre- 
sents mainly  the  opinion  of  the  new  trade  unions  of 
unskilled  labour — dockers  and  others — which  have  sprung 
into  existence  recently,  and  it  was  strong  enough  at  the  Trade 
Union  Congress  in   1890  to    carry  the   day  against  the  old 


86  Contemporary  Socialism, 

nnionism  of  the  skilled  trades  by  a  considerable  majority  in 
favour  of  the  compulsory  and  universal  eight  hours  day.  But, 
as  Mr.  T.  Burt,  M.P.,  the  miners'  parliamentary  representa- 
tive, said  in  his  speech  to  the  Eighty  Club  two  months  after- 
wards, the  New  Unionism  is,  after  all,  only  the  young  and 
inexperienced  unionism,  and  must  needs  run  now  through  the 
same  kind  of  errors  which  the  older  trade  unions  have  gone 
through  before,  but  will,  like  the  older  unions,  learn,  by  dis- 
cussion and  experiment,  to  keep  within  the  lines  of  practicable 
and  beneficial  action.  However  that  may  be,  for  the  moment, 
at  any  rate,  the  fortunes  of  English  socialism  seem  to  lie 
with  Mr.  John  Burns  and  his  labour  mo^^ement,  and  not  with 
the  two  sociaUst  organizations  which  appear  to  have  already 
reached  their  height,  and  to  be  now  on  the  decline. 

A  well-informed  German  writer  lately  warned  us  that  anar- 
chism had  brought  its  headquarters  to  London,  that  it  was 
coming  into  relations  with  the  English  population  through 
its  clubs  and  newspapers,  and  he  ventured  to  prophesy  that 
we  should  certainly  have  soon  an  anarchist  fire  to  extinguish 
on  our  own  hearth  much  more  serious  than  Germany  or  Austria 
has  had  to  encounter.  So  far,  however,  there  is  Httle  to 
support  such  a  prophecy.  There  are  four  small  anarchist 
clubs  in  London — three  of  them  German  clubs,  which  live  at 
strife  with  one  another,  and  the  fourth  a  Russian  or  Polish 
club,  whose  members  have  few  or  no  dealings  with  the  Ger- 
mans. The  German  anarchists  publish  two  weekly  news- 
papers in  German,  which  it  is  their  great  business  to  smuggle 
into  the  Fatherland,  and  the  Russian  or  Polish  anarchists 
publish  one  in  Yedish — the  German-Hebrew  patois  of  the 
Polish  Jews — which  is  printed  for  the  entertainment  of  the 
Polish  tailors  of  the  East  End.  Some  of  the  principal  anar- 
chist leaders,  it  is  true,  Hve  amongst  us — for  example.  Prince 
Krapotkin  and  Victor  Dave — and  under  their  influence  a 
group  of  English  anarchists  has  grown  up  during  the  last 
few  years ;  but  this  group  has  already,  after  the  manner  of 
modern  revolutionists,  split  on  a  point  of  doctrine  into  two 
opposite  camps,  which, — if  we  may  judge  from  their  respective 
organs.  The  Anarchist  and  Freedom — expend  a  considerable 
share  of  their   destructive  energies  upon  one  another.     The 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     8  7 

English  anarchists  have  no  permanent  organization  of  any 
kind,  and  the  one  group  are  for  socialist  anarchism,  and  the 
other  for  individualist  anarchism.  On  the  whole  the  con- 
version of  the  English  by  the  anarchist  refugees  is  not  an 
idea  worthy  of  serious  consideration  ;  a  better  and  more  likely 
result  would  be  that  they  would  themselves,  like  Alexander 
Herzen,  the  leading  anarchist  of  the  past  generation,  be  con- 
verted in  England  to  more  rational  ideas  of  politics.  Our 
safety  lies,  however,  not  so  much  in  the  practical  character 
of  our  people,  as  in  their  habits  of  free  and  open  discussion. 
What  is  called  practicality  is  no  safeguard  against  delusive  ideas 
outside  one's  own  immediate  field  of  activity,  and  there  is 
perhaps  no  country,  except  the  still  more  practical  country  of 
America,  where  more  favour  is  shown  than  here  to  fanaticism 
of  any  kind,  if  there  seems  to  be  heart  in  it.  Besides,  when  we 
hear  it  said,  We  have  indeed  an  enormous  proletariat,  but  they 
are  too  practical  to  think  of  insurrection,  we  ought  to  reflect 
that,  to  the  miserable,  the  practical  test  of  a  scheme  will  not 
be,  Shall  we  be  any  the  better  for  the  change?  but  Shall 
we  be  any  the  worse  for  it?  But  under  free  institutions 
grievances  always  come  to  be  ventilated  ;  ventilation  leads  to 
more  or  less  remedial  measures,  and  discontent  is  removed 
altogether,  or,  at  any  rate,  appeased  for  the  time ;  and  although 
under  free  institutions  ill-considered  schemes  which  inflate  that 
discontent  with  delusive  hopes  may  raise  for  a  season  a  boom 
of  earnest  discussion,  the  discussion  eventually  kills  them. 
So  it  seems  to  be  with  the  fortunes  of  revolutionary  socialism 
in  England  to-day.  It  has  been  much  discussed  for  six  years, 
but  the  height  of  the  tide  has  been  reached  already,  and  the 
movement  is  now  apparently  on  the  ebb. 

Besides  these  manifestations  of  revolutionary  sociahsm,  we 
have  various  societies  representing  an  amateur  and  apprecia- 
tive interest  in  socialism.  There  is  the  Christian  Socialist 
Society,  a  small  body  of  less  than  150  adherents,  including 
many  clergymen  and  other  members  of  the  learned  professions. 
They  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  Christian  Socialists  of 
forty  years  ago,  Maurice,  Kingsley,  and  their  allies,  for  the 
survivors  of  this  earlier  movement,  such  as  Judge  Thomas 
Hughes,  Mr.  Vansittart  Neale,  and  Mr.  J.  M.  Ludlow,  do  not 


88  Contemporary  Socialism. 

belong  to  the  present  Christian  Socialist  Society,  and  would 
repudiate  its  principles.  They  wanted  to  promote  co-operation 
without  State  interference,  and  they  take  a  leading  part  in 
the  co-operative  movement  still ;  but  the  Christian  Socialist 
Society  of  the  present  day  is  all  for  State  interference,  and 
the  articles  of  its  organ,  the  Christian  Socialist,  strongly 
support  the  doctrines  of  Karl  Marx,  and  declare  that  '•  the 
command,  '  Thou  shalt  not  steal,'  if  impartially  applied,  must 
absolutely  prohibit'  the  capitalist,  as  such,  from  deriving  any 
revenue  whatever  from  the  labourer's  toil."  But  with  all 
their  will  to  believe  with  the  Marxists,  the  latter  are  not  sure 
of  them,  and  the  socialist  organs,  Justice  and  To-Day,  twit  them 
one  day  for  not  being  Christians,  and  the  next  for  not  being 
socialists.  They  are  not  men  of  the  same  mark  as  the  earlier 
body  of  English  Christian  socialists,  Canon  Shuttleworth  and 
Mr.  Stewart  Headlam  being  the  two  best  known  of  them. 
The  Guild  of  St.  Matthew,  which  is  composed  to  some  extent 
of  the  same  personnel  as  the  Christian  Socialist  Society,  has 
published  a  compendium  of  Christian  socialism,  and  strives, 
among  other  branches  of  its  activity,  to  cultivate  good  rela- 
tions between  socialists  and  the  Church 

The  Fabian  Society,  again,  is  a  debating  club  of  mixed 
socialism.  It  contains  socialists  of  all  feathers — revolutionary 
socialists  and  philosophical  socialists,  Christian  socialists  and 
un-Christian  socialists — who  meet  together  under  its  auspices 
and  exchange  their  views,  without  having  any  recognised  end 
beyond  the  discussion.  They  intervened  lately,  however,  in 
the  eight  hours  day  controversy,  and  drafted  a  bill  for  a  com- 
pulsory measure  on  the  subject  which  attracted  some  public 
attention.  Among  the  principal  members  are  Mr.  Sidney 
"Webb,  a  well-known  writer  and  lecturer  on  economic  subjects, 
Mr.  G.  Bernard  Shaw,  journalist,  Mrs.  Besant,  and  Mr.  W. 
Clarke.  They  have  published  a  volume  of  Fabian  Essays, 
which  has  had  a  large  sale. 

No  account  of  English  socialism  would  be  complete  that 
made  no  mention  of  the  writings  of  Mr.  Ruskin,  which  have 
probably  done  more  than  any  other  single  influence  to  imbue 
English  minds  with  sentiments  and  principles  of  a  socialistic 
character.     But  they  have  produced  nothing  in  the  nature  of 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     89 

a  scliool  or  party  more  than  perhaps  some  detached  local 
group ;  such,  for  example,  as  the  Sheffield  Socialists,  a  small 
body  formed  under  Ruskinian  inspiration,  and  the  leadership 
of  Mr.  E.  Carpenter. 

The  outburst  of  socialist  agitation  in  England  in  1883  and 
1884  was  immediately  preceded  by  a  revival  of  popular  in- 
terest in  an  old  and  favourite  subject  of  English  speculation,  the 
nationalization  of  the  land.  Mr.  Henry  George  had  published 
his  "  Progress  and  Poverty  "  in  1881,  and  in  the  same  year  the 
Democratic  Federation  was  established  in  London  with  land 
nationalization  for  one  of  its  principles,  and  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace, 
the  eminent  naturalist,  founded  the  Land  Nationalization 
Society.  In  1882,  Mr.  Wallace  contributed  still  further  to 
awaken  discussion  of  the  question  by  publishing  his  work  on 
"  Land  Nationalization,"  and  the  discussion  was  spread  every- 
where in  1883  by  the  appearance  of  a  sixpenny  edition  of  Mr. 
George's  remarkable  work.  Land  nationalization  in  the  hands 
of  Mr.  Wallace  has  little  in  common  with  any  form  of  con- 
temporary socialism.  He  does  not  contemplate  any  inter- 
ference with  the  present  system  of  agricultural  production ; 
that  is  still  to  be  conducted  by  capitalists  and  hired  labourers, 
as  it  is  now.  He  merely  proposes  to  abolish  what  is  called 
landlordism  by  the  compulsory  conversion  of  the  present 
tenant  farmers  into  a  body  of  yeomanry  or  occupying  owners, 
and  his  scheme  differs  from  the  more  ordinary  proposals  for  the 
creation  of  peasant  proprietors  merely  in  two  points :  1st — which 
is  a  very  good  proposal — that  he  would  leave  part  of  the  price 
of  the  property  to  be  paid  in  the  form  of  a  permanent  annual 
quitrent  to  the  State ;  and  2nd — which  is  a  more  doubtful  pro- 
posal— that  this  part  should  represent,  as  nearly  as  it  is  possible 
now  to  calculate  it,  the  original  value  of  the  soil  apart  from  im- 
provements of  any  kind — or,  in  other  words,  the  unearned  part 
of  the  present  value  of  the  property — and  that  it  should  be 
subject  to  periodical  revision,  with  a  view  to  recovering  from 
the  holder  any  further  unearned  increments  of  value  that  may 
accrue  to  his  holding  from  time  to  time.  Mr.  Wallace,  like 
Mr.  George,  has  very  Utopian  expectations  from  his  scheme ; 
but  he  would  honestly  buy  up  the  rights  of  the  existing  land- 
lords, while  Mr.  George  would  merely  confiscate  them  by  excep- 


90  Contemporary  Socialism. 

tional  taxation.  This  difference  broke  up  the  Land  National- 
ization Society  in  1883,  and  the  partisans  of  Mr.  George's  view 
seceded  and  formed  themselves  into  the  English  Land  Restora- 
tion League,  which  has  established  branches  in  most  of  the 
larger  towns,  and  has  now  probably  a  more  numerous  member- 
ship than  the  original  society.  It  is  especially  strong  in 
Scotland,  and  ran  three  candidates  for  Glasgow  at  the  last 
general  election ;  but  the  three  only  got  2,222  votes  between 
them,  out  of  a  total  of  23,800  polled  in  the  three  divisions 
they  contested.  The  ideas  of  the  League  have  a  certain  vogue 
among  the  Highland  crofters,  where  they  blend  very  readily 
with  the  universal  peasant  doctrines  that  the  earth  is  the 
Lord's,  and  that  all  other  lords  should  be  abolished. 

In  Scotland  there  are  a  good  many  branches  of  the  two 
regular  socialist  organizations.  The  Scottish  Emancipation 
League  joined  the  Social  Democratic  Federation,  and  the 
Scottish  Land  and  Labour  League  joined  the  Socialist  League ; 
but  it  is  remarkable  that  there  is  no  socialism  in  Ireland, 
except  in  a  small  branch  of  the  Socialist  League  in  Dublin, 
called  the  Dublin  Socialist  Club,  although  it  seems  a  miracle 
for  a  country  seething  for  centuries  with  political  and  econo- 
mic discontent  to  escape  such  a  visitation.  Probably,  as  with 
the  Poles,  the  minds  of  the  discontented  are  already  too  much 
pre-occupied  with  other  political  and  social  solutions.  The 
land  nationalization  views  of  Mr.  George  are,  of  course,  spread 
widely  through  the  influence  of  Mr.  Michael  Davitt  in  the 
agrarian  movement  of  Ireland. 

But  while  the  recent  wave  of  socialism  has  passed  over  dis- 
contented Ireland,  and  left  it,  like  Gideon's  fleece,  quite  dry, 
much  more  susceptibility  has  been  shown  by  those  parts  of 
the  Empire  where  the  lot  of  labour  is,  perhaps  in  all  the  world, 
the  happiest — the  Australian  colonies.  Here,  too,  the  suscep- 
tibility has  been  created  to  some  extent  by  the  land  questions 
of  the  country.  Mr.  George,  in  his  recent  lecturing  tour 
through  these  colonies,  met  with  a  warm  welcome  in  almost 
all  the  towns  he  visited,  made  many  converts  to  his  ideas,  and 
gave  rise  to  a  considerable  agitation.  In  South  Australia  three 
of  his  disciples  were  returned  to  the  Legislature  in  1887,  and 
their  views  are  supported  by  several  newspapers  in  Adelaide. 


The  Progress  and  Present  Position  of  Socialism.     9 1 

In  a  new  colony  the  argument  for  keeping  the  land  in  the 
hands  of  the  State  has  in  some  respects  more  point  and  force  than 
in  an  old.  Mr.  George's  disciples  in  Sydney  publish  a  paper 
called  the  Land  Nationalizer,  and  his  views  are  advocated  by 
one  of  the  most  influential  papers  in  the  colony,  the  Bulletin  of 
Sydney.  In  New  Zealand  a  bill  has  actually  been  brought  in 
for  the  purpose  of  nationalizing  the  land.  But  apart  from  Mr, 
George  altogether,  there  is  a  flourishing  Austrahan  Socialist 
League  in  Sydney,  established  in  1887,  and  with  a  membership 
of  7,000  in  1888.  It  has  a  journal  called  the  Radical,,  and  keeps 
up  a  busy  agitation  with  lectures  and  discussions.  As  a  method 
of  temporary  policy  it  promotes  associations  of  labourers  for  the 
purpose  of  undertaking  Government  and  municipal  contracts. 
In  Melbourne,  again,  people  are  more  advanced.  They  have 
no  socialist  organization,  but  they  have  an  anarchist  club, 
established  in  1886  for  the  purpose  of  aiding  social  reform  on 
the  lines  of  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity.  It  circulates  the 
works  of  Proudhon,  Tucker,  the  Boston  anarchist,  Bakunin, 
and  Mr.  Auberon  Herbert ;  and  it  publishes  a  newspaper  called 
Honesty,  which  appeared  at  first  once  a  month,  and  latterly  once 
in  two  months.  The  ideas  of  the  party  are  not  easy  to  ascertain 
exactly  from  the  pages  of  their  journal.  The  State  is,  of  course, 
the  enemy,  and  land  monopoly  is  one  of  the  State's  worst  crea- 
tions ;  but  some  of  the  writers  advocate  land  nationalization, 
while  others  propound  a  scheme  of  what  they  call  "  construc- 
tive anarchy,"  under  which  every  man  is  to  own  the  land  he 
occupies.  They  have  started  a  new  form  of  co-operative  store, 
a  kind  of  mutual  production  society,  whose  members  bind 
themselves  to  produce  for  one  another,  and  exchange  their 
products  for  the  bare  cost  of  production;  and  they  have  started 
a  co-operative  home,  in  which  the  members  get  better  and 
cheaper  accommodation  through  their  combination.  Melbourne 
anarchism,  however,  has  no  harm  in  it :  it  is  a  mere  spark  of 
eccentric  speculation.  The  working  class  of  Melbourne  is 
probably  the  most  powerful  and  the  best  organized  working 
class  in  the  world.  In  their  Trades  Hall  they  have  had  for 
thirty  years  a  workmen's  chamber  of  their  own  creating  like 
what  German  sociahsts  are  vainly  asking  from  the  State,  and 
much  more  effective,  because  more  independent.     They  have 


92  Contemporary  Socialis7tt. 

secured  the  eight  hours  day  to  fifty-two  different  trades  with- 
out receiving  a  finger's  help  from  the  law,  and  without  losing 
a  shilling  of  wages.  They  have,  moreover,  the  voting  power  in 
their  own  hands.  In  fact,  they  are,  as  nearly  as  any  working 
class  can  be,  in  the  precise  condition  socialists  require  for 
revolutionary  action.  They  are  entirely  dependent  on  a 
handful  of  capitalists  for  their  employment,  and  they  have  the 
whole  power  of  the  State  substantially  under  their  own  control ; 
so  that  they  might,  if  they  chose,  march  to  the  Parliament 
House  with  a  red  flag,  and  instal  the  socialist  State  to-morrow. 
But  they  do  not  choose.  They  propose  no  change  in  the  present 
industrial  system,  and  make  surprisingly  few  demands  of  any 
sort  upon  the  State.  The  world  goes  very  well  with  them 
as  it  is,  and  they  will  not  risk  the  comforts  they  really  enjoy 
to  try  any  sweeping  and  problematical  solutions.  While  the 
socialist  movement,  in  the  countries  where  it  is  most  advanced 
and  powerful,  seems  settling  into  a  practical  labour  movement, 
the  labour  movement,  in  the  countries  where  it  is  most 
advanced  and  powerful,  is  steering  furthest  and  clearest  from 
socialism. 


CHAPTER  ni. 

FERDINAND    LASSALLE. 

German  socialism  is—  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say — the  creation 
of  Ferdinand  Lassalle,  Of  course  there  were  socialists  in 
Germany  before  Lassalle.  There  are  socialists  everywhere. 
A  certain  rudimentary  socialism  is  always  in  latent  circulation 
in  what  may  be  called  the  "  natural  heart  "  of  society.  The 
secret  clubs  of  China — "  the  fraternal  leagues  of  heaven  and 
earth  " — who  argue  that  the  world  is  iniquitously  arranged, 
that  the  rich  are  too  rich,  and  the  poor  too  poor,  and  that  the 
wealth  of  the  great  has  all  accrued  from  the  sweat  of  the 
masses,  only  give  a  formal  expression  to  ideas  that  are  probably 
never  far  from  any  one  of  us  who  have  to  work  hard  and  earn 
little,  and  they  merely  formulate  them  less  systematically  than 
Marx  and  his  disciples  do  in  their  theories  of  the  exploitation 
of  labour  by  capital.  Socialism  is  thus  so  much  in  the  common 
air  we  all  breathe,  that  there  is  force  in  the  view  that  the 
thing  to  account  for  is  not  so  much  the  presence  of  socialism, 
at  any  time,  as  its  absence.  Accordingly  it  had  frequently 
appeared  in  Germany  under  various  forms  before  Lassalle. 
Fichte — to  go  no  farther  back — had  taught  it  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  speculative  philosopher  and  philanthropist. 
Schleiermacher,  it  may  be  remembered,  was  brought  up  in  a 
religious  community  that  practised  it.  Weitling,  with  some 
aUies,  preached  it  in  a  pithless  and  hazy  way  as  a  gospel  to  the 
poor,  and,  finding  little  encouragement,  went  to  America,  to 
work  it  out  experimentally  there.  The  Young  Hegelians  made 
it  part  of  their  philosophic  creed.  The  Silesian  weavers, 
superseded  by  machinery,  and  perishing  for  want  of  work, 
raised  it  as  a  wild  inarticulate  cry  for  bread,  and  dignified  it 
with  the  sanction  of  tears  and  blood.  And  Karl  Marx  and 
Friedrich  Engels,  in  1848,  summoned  the  proletariat  of  the 

93 


94  Contemporary  Socialism. 

whole  world  to  make  it  the  aim  and  instrument  of  a  universal 
revolution.  But  it  was  Lassalle  who  first  really  brought  it 
from  the  clouds  and  made  it  a  living  historical  force  in  the 
common  politics  of  the  day.  The  late  eminent  Professor 
Lorenz  von  Stein,  of  Vienna,  said,  in  1842,  in  his  acute  and 
thoughtful  work  on  French  Communism,  that  Germany,  unlike 
France,  and  particularly  England,  had  nothing  to  fear  from 
socialism,  because  Germany  had  no  proletariat  to  speak  of. 
Yet,  in  twenty  years,  we  find  Germany  become  suddenly  the 
theatre  of  the  most  important  and  formidable  embodiment  of 
socialism  that  has  anywhere  appeared.  Important  and  for- 
midable, for  two  reasons :  it  founds  its  doctrines,  as  socialism 
has  never  done  before,  on  a  thoroughly  scientific  investigation 
of  the  facts,  and  criticism  of  the  principles,  of  the  present 
industrial  regime^  and  it  seeks  to  carry  them  out  by  means  of  a 
political  organization,  growing  singularly  in  strength,  and  based 
on  the  class  interests  of  the  great  majority  of  the  people. 

There  were,  of  course,  predisposing  conditions  for  this  out- 
burst. .  A  German  proletariat  had  come  into  being  since  Stein 
wrote,  and  though  still  much  smaller,  in  the  aggregate,  than 
the  English,  it  was  perhaps  really  at  this  time  the  more 
plethoric  and  distressed  of  the  two.  For  the  condition  of  the 
English  working-classes  had  been  greatly  relieved  by  emigra- 
tion, by  factor}'-  legislation,  by  trades  unions,  whereas  in  some 
of  these  directions  nothing  at  all,  and  in  others  only  the 
faintest  beginnings,  had  as  yet  been  effected  in  Germany. 
Then,  the  stir  of  big  political  movement  and  anticipation  was 
on  men's  minds.  The  future  of  the  German  nation,  its  unity, 
its  freedom,  its  development,  were  practical  questions  of  the 
hour.  The  nationality  principle  is  essentially  democratic,  and 
the  aspirations  for  German  unity  carried  with  them  in  every 
one  of  the  States  strong  movements  for  the  extension  of 
popular  freedom  and  power.  This  long  spasmodic  battle  for 
liberty  in  Germany,  which  began  with  the  century,  and 
remains  still  unsettled,  this  long  series  of  revolts  and  con- 
cessions and  overridings,  and  hopes  flattered  and  again 
deferred,  this  long  uncertain  babble  of  Gross-Deutsch  and 
Klein-Detdschj  and  Centralist  and  Federalist  and  Particularist, 
of  "  Gotha  ideas  "  and  "  new  eras  "  and   "  blood  and  iron," 


Ferdinand  Lassalle.  95 

had  prepared  tlie  public  ear  for  bold  political  solutions,  and 
has  entered  from  the  first  as  an  active  and  not  unimportant 
factor  in  the  socialist  agitation.  Then,  again,  the  general 
political  habits  and  training  of  the  people  must  be  taken  into 
account.  Socialistic  ideas  would  find  a  readier  vogue  in 
Germany  than  in  this  country,  because  the  people  are  less 
rigidly  practical,  because  they  have  been  less  used  to  the 
sifting  exercise  of  free  discussion,  and  because  they  have 
always  seen  the  State  doing  a  great  deal  for  them  which  they 
could  do  better  for  themselves,  and  are  consequently  apt  to 
visit  the  State  with  blame  and  claims  for  which  it  ought  not 
to  be  made  responsible.  Then  the  decline  of  religious  belief  in 
German}'^,  which  the  Church  herself  did  much  to  produce  when 
she  was  rationalistic,  without  being  able  to  undo  it  since  she 
has  become  orthodox,  must  certainly  have  impaired  the 
patience  with  which  the  poor  endured  the  miseries  of  their  lot, 
when  they  still  entertained  the  hope  of  exchanging  it  in  a  few 
short  years  for  a  happier  and  an  everlasting  one  hereafter. 

All  these  circumstances  undoubtedly  favoured  the  success  of 
the  socialistic  agitation  at  the  period  it  started ;  but,  when 
everything  is  said,  it  is  still  doubtful  whether  German  socialism 
would  ever  have  come  into  being  but  for  Lassalle.  Its  fer- 
menting principle  has  been  less  want  than  positive  ideas. 
This  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  it  was  at  first  received  among 
the  German  working  classes  with  an  apathy  that  almost  dis- 
heartened Lassalle  ;  and  that  it  is  now  zealously  propagated  by 
them  as  a  cause,  as  an  evangel,  even  after  they  have  emigrated 
to  America,  where  their  circumstances  are  comparatively 
comfortable.  The  ideas  it  contains  Lassalle  found  for  the 
most  part  ready  to  his  hand.  The  germs  of  them  may  be 
discovered  in  the  writings  of  Proudhon,  in  the  projects  of 
Louis  Blanc.  Some  of  them  he  acknowledges  he  owes  to 
Rodbertus,  others  to  Karl  Marx,  but  it  was  in  passing  through 
his  mind  they  first  acquired  the  stamp  and  ring  that  made 
them  current  coin.  Contentions  about  the  priority  of  pub- 
lishing this  bit  or  that  bit  of  an  idea,  especially  if  the  idea  be 
false,  need  not  concern  us ;  and  indeed  Lassalle  makes  no 
claim  to  originality  in  the  economical  field.  He  was  not  so 
much  an  inventive  as  a  critical  thinker,  and  a  critical  thinker 


96  Contemporary  Socialism. 

of  almost  the  first  rank,  witli  a  dialectic  power,  and  a 
clear,  vivid  exposition  that  have  seldom  been  excelled.  Any 
originality  that  is  claimed  for  him  lies  in  the  region  of 
interpretation  of  previous  thought,  and  that  in  the  departments 
of  metaphyics  and  jurisprudence,  not  of  economics. 

The  peculiarity  of  his  mind  was  that  it  hungered  with 
almost  equal  intensity  for  profound  study  and  for  exciting 
action,  and  that  he  had  the  gifts  as  well  as  the  impulses  for 
both.  As  he  said  of  Heraclitus  the  Dark,  whom  he  spent  some 
of  his  best  years  in  expounding,  "  there  was  storm  in  his 
nature."  Heine,  who  knew  and  loved  him  well  as  a  young 
man  in  Paris,  and  indeed  found  his  society  so  delightful  during 
his  last  years  of  haggard  suflfering,  that  he  said,  "  No  one  has 
ever  done  so  much  for  me,  and  when  I  receive  letters  from  you, 
courage  rises  in  me,  and  I  feel  better," — Heine  characterizes 
him  very  truly  in  a  letter  to  Varnhagen  von  Ense.  He  says 
he  was  struck  with  astonishment  at  the  combination  of 
qualities  Lassalle  displayed — the  union  of  so  much  intellectual 
power,  deep  learning,  rich  exposition  on  the  one  hand,  with  so 
much  energy  of  will  and  capacit}^  for  action  on  the  other. 
"With  all  this  admiration,  however,  he  seems  unable  to  regard 
him  without  misgiving,  for  his  audacious  confidence,  checked 
by  no  thought  of  renunciation  or  tremor  of  modesty,  amazed 
him  as  much  as  his  ability.  In  this  respect  he  says  Lassalle  is 
a  genuine  son  of  the  modern  time,  to  which  Varnhagen  and 
himself  had  acted  in  a  way  as  the  midwives,  but  on  which  they 
could  only  look  like  the  hen  that  hatched  duck's  eggs  and 
shuddered  to  see  how  her  brood  took  to  the  water  and  swam 
about  delighted.  Heine  here  puts  his  finger  on  the  secret  of 
his  young  friend's  failure.  Lassalle  would  have  been  a  great 
man  if  he  had  more  of  the  ordinary  restraining  perceptions, 
but  he  had  neither  fear  nor  awe,  nor  even — in  spite  of  his  vein 
of  satire — a  wholesome  sense  of  the  ridiculous, — in  this  last 
respect  resembling,  if  we  believe  Carlyle,  all  Jews.  Chivalrous, 
susceptible,  with  a  genuine  feeling  for  the  poor  man's  case,  and 
a  genuine  enthusiasm  for  social  reform,  a  warm  friend,  a 
vindictive  enemy,  full  of  ambition  both  of  the  nobler  and  the 
more  vulgar  type,  beset  with  an  importunate  vanity  and  given 
to  primitive  lusts ;  generous  qualities  and  churlish  throve  and 


Ferdijiand  Lassalle.  97 

strove  in  liim  side  by  side,  and  governed  or  misgoverned  a  will 
to  wMch.  opposition  was  almost  a  native  and  necessary  element, 
and  which,  yet — or  perhaps  rather,  therefore — brooked  no 
check.  "  Ferdinand  Lassalle,  thinker  and  fighter,"  is  the 
simple  epitaph  Professor  Boeckh  put  on  his  tomb.  Thinking 
and  fighting  were  the  craving  of  his  nature ;  thinking  and 
fighting  were  the  warp  and  woof  of  his  actual  career,  mingled 
indeed  with  threads  of  more  spurious  fibre.  The  philosophical 
thinker  and  the  political  agitator  are  parts  rarely  combined  in 
one  person,  but  to  these  Lassalle  added  yet  a  third,  which 
seems  to  agree  with  neither.  He  was  a  fashionable  dandy, 
noted  for  his  dress,  for  his  dinners,  and,  it  must  be  added,  for 
his  addiction  to  pleasure — a  man  apparently  with  little  of  that 
solidarity  in  his  own  being  which  he  sought  to  introduce  into 
society  at  large,  and  yet  his  public  career  possesses  an  un- 
doubted unity.  It  is  a  mistake  to  represent  him,  as  Mr.  L. 
Montefiore  has  done,  as  a  savan  who  turned  politician  as  if  by 
accident  and  against  his  will,  for  the  stir  of  politics  was  as 
essential  to  him  as  the  absorption  of  study.  It  is  a  greater 
mistake,  though  a  more  common  one,  to  represent  him  as 
having  become  a  revolutionary  agitator  because  no  other 
political  career  was  open  to  him.  He  felt  himself,  it  is  said, 
like  a  Csesar  out  of  employ,  disqualified  for  all  legitimate 
politics  by  his  previous  life,  and  he  determined,  if  he  could  not 
bend  the  gods,  that  he  would  move  Acheron.  But  so  early  as 
1848,  when  yet  but  a  lad  of  twenty-three,  he  was  tried  for 
sedition,  and  he  then  declared  boldly  in  his  defence  that  he  was 
a  socialist  democrat,  and  that  he  was  "  revolutionary  on  prin- 
ciple." This  he  remained  throughout.  He  laughs  at  those 
who  cannot  hear  the  word  revolution  without  a  shudder. 
"  Revolution,"  he  says,  "  means  merely  transformation,  and  is 
accomplished  when  an  entirely  new  principle  is — either  with 
force  or  without  it — put  in  the  place  of  an  existing  state  of 
things.  Reform,  on  the  other  hand,  is  when  the  principle  of 
the  existing  state  of  things  is  continued,  and  only  developed 
to  more  logical  or  just  consequences.  The  means  do  not  ' 
signify.  A  reform  may  be  carried  out  by  bloodshed,  and  a 
revolution  in  the  profoundest  tranquillity.  The  Peasants' 
War  was  an  attempt  to  introduce  reform  by  arms,  the  inven- 

H 


98  Contemporary  Socialism. 

tion  of  the  spinning-jenny  wrought  a  peaceful  revolution." 
In  this  sense  he  was  "  revolutionary  on  principle."  His 
thought  was  revolutionary,  and  it  was  the  lessons  he  learnt  as 
a  philosopher  that  he  applied  and  pled  for  an  agitator.  His 
thinking  and  his  fighting  belonged  together  like  powder  and 
shot.  His  Hegelianism,  which  he  adopted  as  a  youth  at 
college,  is  from  first  to  last  the  continuous  source  both  of 
impetus  and  direction  over  his  public  career.  Young  Germany 
was  Hegelian  and  revolutionary  at  the  time  he  went  to  the 
University  (1842),  and  with  the  impressionable  Lassalle,  then 
a  youth  of  seventeen,  Hegelianism  became  a  passion.  He 
wrote  articles  on  it  in  University  magazines,  preached  it  right 
and  left  in  the  cafes  and  taverns,  and  resolved  to  make  philo- 
sophy his  profession  and  establish  himself  as  a  privat  Docent  at 
Berlin  University.  It  was  the  first  sovereign  intellectual 
influence  he  came  under,  and  it  ruled  his  spirit  to  the  end. 
In  adopting  it,  his  intellectual  manhood  may  be  said  to  have 
opened  with  a  revolution,  for  his  family  were  strict  Jews,  and 
he  was  brought  up  in  their  religion. 

Lassalle  was  born  in  1825  at  Breslau,  where  his  father  was  a 
wholesale  dealer.  He  was  educated  at  the  Universities  of  Bres- 
lau and  Berlin,  and  at  the  latter  city  saw,  through  the  Mendels- 
sohns,  a  good  deal  of  the  best  literary  society  there,  and  made 
the  acquaintance,  among  others,  of  Alexander  von  Humboldt, 
who  used  to  call  him  a  Wunderldnd.  On  finishing  his  curri- 
culum, he  went  for  a  time  to  Paris,  and  formed  there  a  close 
friendship  with  H.  Heine,  who  was  an  old  acquaintance  of  his 
family.  He  meant  to  qualify  himself  as  prwat  Docent  when  he 
returned,  but  was  diverted  from  his  purpose  by  the  task  of  re- 
dressing a  woman's  wrongs,  into  which  he  flew  with  the  roman- 
tic enterprise  of  a  knight-errant,  and  which  he  carried,  through 
years  of  patient  and  zealous  labour,  to  a  successful  issue.  The 
Countess  Hatzfeldt  had  been  married  when  a  girl  of  sixteen  to 
a  cousin  of  her  own,  one  of  the  great  nobles  of  Germany ;  but 
the  marriage  turned  out  most  unhappily  after  a  few  years,  and 
she  was  obliged,  on  account  of  the  maltreatment  she  suffered, 
to  live  apart  from  her  husband.  His  persecution  followed  her 
into  her  separation.  He  took  child  after  child  from  her,  and 
was  now  seeking  to  take  the  last  she  had  left,  her  youngest 


Fsrdinand  Lassalle.  99 

son.  He  allowed  her  very  scanty  and  irregular  support,  while 
he  lavished  his  money  on  mistresses,  and  was,  at  this  very 
moment,  settling  on  one  of  them  an  annuity  of  £1,000.  This 
state  of  things  had  continued  for  twenty  years,  and  the  Coun- 
tess's own  relations  had,  for  family  reasons,  always  declined  to 
take  up  her  case.  Lassalle,  who  had  made  her  acquaintance  in 
Berlin,  was  profoundly  touched  by  her  story,  and  felt  that  she 
was  suffering  an  intolerable  wrong,  which  society  permitted 
only  because  she  was  a  woman,  and  her  husband  a  lord. 
Though  not  a  lawyer,  he  resolved  to  undertake  her  case,  and 
after  carrying  the  suit  before  thirty-six  different  courts,  during 
a  period  of  eight  years,  he  at  length  procured  for  her  a  divorce 
in  1851,  and  a  princely  fortune  in  1854,  from  which  she  re- 
warded him  with  a  considerable  annuity  for  his  exertions. 
Lassalle's  connection  with  this  case  not  unnaturally  gave  rise 
to  sinister  construction.  It  was  supposed  he  must  have  been 
in  love  with  the  Countess,  and  wanted  to  marry  her,  but  this 
was  disproved  by  the  event.  Darker  insinuations  were  made, 
but  had  there  been  truth  in  them,  it  could  not  have  escaped 
the  spies  the  Count  sent  to  watch  him,  and  the  servants  the 
Count  bribed  to  inform  on  him.  Chivalry,  vanity,  and  teme- 
rity at  the  season  of  life  when  all  three  qualities  are  at  their 
height,  account  sufficiently  for  his  whole  conduct,  and  I  see  no 
reason  to  doubt  the  explanation  he  himself  gives  of  it.  "  Her 
family,"  he  states,  "  were  silent,  but  it  is  said  when  men  keep 
silence  the  stones  will  speak.  "When  every  human  right  is 
violated,  when  even  the  voice  of  blood  is  mute,  and  helpless 
man  is  forsaken  by  his  bom  protectors,  there  then  rises 
with  right  man's  first  and  last  relation — man.  You  have 
all  read  with  emotion  the  monstrous  history  of  the  un- 
happy Duchess  of  Praslin.  Who  is  there  among  you  that 
would  not  have  gone  to  the  death  to  defend  her  ?  Well,  gentle- 
men, I  said  to  myself,  here  is  Praslin  ten  times  over.  What  is 
the  sharp  death-agony  of  an  hour  compared  with  the  pangs  of 
death  protracted  over  twenty  years  ?  What  are  the  wounds  a 
knife  inflicts  compared  with  the  slow  murder  dispensed  with 
refined  cruelty  throughout  a  being's  whole  existence  ?  What 
are  they  compared  with  the  immense  woe  of  this  woman,  every 
right  of  whose  life  has  been  trampled  under  foot,  day  after  day. 


lOO  Contemporary  Socialism. 

for  twenty  years,  and  whom  they  have  first  tried  to  cover  with 
contempt,  that  they  might  then  the  more  securely  overwhelm 
her  with  punishment  ?  .  .  .  The  difficulties,  the  sacrifices, 
the  dangers  did  not  deter  me.  I  determined  to  meet  false 
appearances  with  the  truth,  to  meet  rank  with  right,  to  meet 
the  power  of  money  with  the  power  of  mind.  But  if  I  had 
known  what  infamous  calumnies  I  should  have  to  encounter, 
how  people  turned  the  purest  motives  into  their  contraries,  and 
what  ready  credence  they  gave  to  the  most  wretched  lies — 
well,  I  hope  my  purpose  would  not  have  been  changed,  but  it 
would  have  cost  me  a  severe  and  bitter  struggle."  There  seems 
almost  something  unmodern  in  the  whole  circumstances  of  this 
case,  both  in  the  oppression  the  victim  endured,  and  in  the 
manner  of  her  rescue. 

In  the  course  of  this  suit  occurred  the  robbery  of  Baroness 
von  Meyerdorfi''s  cassette,  on  which  so  much  has  been  said. 
The  Baroness  was  the  person  already  mentioned  on  whom 
Count  Hatzfeldt  bestowed  the  annuity  of  £1,000.  The  Coun- 
tess, on  hearing  of  this  settlement,  went  straight  to  her  hus- 
band, accompanied  by  a  clergyman,  and  insisted  upon  him 
cancelling  it,  in  justice  to  his  youngest  son,  whom  it  would 
have  impoverished.  The  Count  at  first  promised  to  do  so,  but 
after  her  departure,  refused,  and  the  Baroness  set  out  for  Aix 
to  get  her  bond  effectually  secured.  Lassalle  suspected  the 
object  of  her  journey,  and  said  to  the  Countess,  in  the  presence 
of  two  young  friends.  Could  we  not  obtain  possession  of  this 
bond  ?  No  sooner  said  than  done.  The  two  young  men  started 
for  Cologne,  and  one  of  them  stole  the  Baroness's  cassette,  con- 
taining the  veritable  deed,  in  her  hotel,  and  gave  it  to  the 
other.  They  and  Lassalle  were  all  three  successively  tried  for 
their  part  in  this  crime.  Oppenheim,  who  actually  stole  the 
cassette,  was  acquitted ;  Mendelssohn,  who  only  received  it,  was 
sent  to  prison  ;  and  Lassalle,  who  certainly  suggested  the  deed, 
was  found  guilty  by  the  jury,  but  acquitted  by  the  judges. 
Moral  complicity  of  some  sort  was  clear,  but  it  did  not  amount 
to  a  legal  crime.  Our  interest  with  the  transaction  is  merely 
to  discover  the  light  it  reflects  on  the  character  of  the  man. 
It  was  a  rash,  foolish,  and  lawless  freak,  but  of  course  the 
ordinary  motives  of  the  robber  were  absent.     The  theft  of  the 


Ferdinand  Lassalle.  loi 

cassette^  however,  was  a  transaction  which  his  enemies  never 
suffered  to  be  forgotten. 

The  theft  of  the  cassette  occurred  in  1846 ;  Lassalle  was  tried 
for  it  in  1848,  and  was  no  sooner  released  than  he  fell  into  the 
hands  of  justice  on  a  much  more  serious  charge.  The  dissolu- 
tion of  the  first  Prussian  National  Assembly  in  1848,  and  the 
gift  of  a  Constitution  by  direct  royal  decree,  had  excited  bitter 
disappointment  and  opposition  over  the  whole  country.  There 
was  a  general  agitation  for  combining  to  stop  supplies  by  re- 
fusing to  pay  taxes,  in  order  thus  "  to  meet  force  with  force," 
and  this  agitation  was  particularly  active  in  the  Rhine  pro- 
vinces, where  democratic  views  had  found  much  favour.  Las- 
salle even  planned  an  insurrection,  and  urged  the  citizens  of 
Dusseldorf  to  armed  resistance ;  but  the  Prussian  Government 
promptly  intervened,  placed  the  town  under  a  state  of  siege, 
and  threw  Lassalle  into  jail.  He  was  tried  in  1849  for  treason, 
and  acquitted  by  the  jury,  but  was  immediately  afterwards 
brought  before  a  correctional  tribunal  on  the  minor  charge  of 
resisting  officers  of  the  police,  and  sent  to  prison  for  six  months. 
It  was  in  his  speech  at  the  former  of  these  trials  that  he  de- 
clared himself  a  partisan  of  the  Socialist  Democratic  Republic, 
and  claimed  for  every  citizen  the  right  and  duty  of  active  re- 
sistance to  the  State  when  necessary.  He  had  nothing  but 
scorn  to  pour  on  the  passive  resistance  policy  of  the  Parliament. 
"  Passive  resistance  is  a  contradiction  in  itself.  It  is  like  Lich- 
tenberg's  knife,  without  blade,  and  without  handle,  or  like  the 
fleece  which  one  must  wash  without  wetting.  It  is  mere  inward 
ill-will  without  the  outward  deed.  The  Crown  confiscates  the 
people's  freedom  ;  and  the  Prussian  National  Assembly,  for  the 
people's  protection,  declares  ill-will ;  it  would  be  unintelligible 
how  the  commonest  logic  should  have  allowed  a  legislative 
assembly  to  cover  itself  with  such  incomparable  ridicule  if  it 
were  not  too  intelligible."  These  are  bold  words.  He  felt 
himself  standing  on  a  principle  and  representing  a  cause  ;  and 
so  he  went  into  prison,  he  tells  us,  with  as  light  a  heart  as  he 
would  have  gone  to  a  ball ;  and  when  he  heard  that  his  sister 
had  petitioned  for  his  pardon,  he  wrote  instantly  and  publicly 
disclaimed  her  letter. 

All    these   trials   had    brought    Lassalle    into    considerable 


I02  Contemporary  Socialism. 

notoriety,  not  un mingled  with  a  due  recognition  of  his  un- 
doubted verce^  eloquence,  and  brilliancy.  One  effect  of  them 
was  that  he  was  forbidden  to  come  to  Berlin.  This  prohibition 
was  founded,  of  course,  on  his  seditious  work  at  Dusseldorf,  but 
is  believed  to  have  been  instigated  and  kept  up  by  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Hatzfeldt  family.  Lassalle  felt  it  a  sore  privation, 
for  his  ambitions  and  hopes  all  centred  in  Berlin.  After  various 
ineffectual  attempts  to  obtain  permission,  he  arrived  in  the 
capital  one  day  in  1857  disguised  as  a  waggoner,  and  through 
the  personal  intercession  of  Alexander  von  Humboldt  with  the 
king,  was  at  length  suffered  to  remain.  His  "  Heraclitus  "  had 
just  appeared,  and  at  once  secured  him  a  position  in  literary 
circles.  One  of  his  first  productions  after  his  return  to  Berlin 
was  a  pamphlet  on  "  The  Italian  "VVar  and  the  Mission  of  Prus- 
sia ;  a  Voice  from  the  Democracy,"  which  shows  that  his  poli- 
tical prosecutions  had  not  soured  him  against  Prussia.  His 
argument  is  that  freedom  and  democracy  must  in  Germany,  as 
in  Italy,  be  first  preceded  by  unity,  and  that  the  only  power 
capable  of  giving  unity  to  Germany  was  Prussia,  as  to  Italy, 
Piedmont.  He  had  more  of  the  political  mind  than  most  revolu- 
tionaries and  doctrinaires,  and  knew  that  the  better  might  be 
made  the  enemy  of  the  good,  and  that  ideals  could  only  be 
carried  out  gradually,  and  by  temporary  compromises.  He  was 
monarchical  for  the  present,  therefore,  no  doubt  because  he 
thought  the  monarchy  to  be  for  the  time  the  best  and  shortest 
road  to  the  democratic  republic.  His  friend  Eodbertus  said 
there  was  an  esoteric  and  an  exoteric  Lassalle.  That  may  be 
said  of  all  politicians.  Compromise  is  of  the  essence  of  their 
work. 

During  the  next  few  years  Lassalle's  literary  activity  was 
considerable.  Besides  a  tragedy  of  no  merit  ("Franz  von 
Sickingen,"  1859)  and  various  pamphlets  or  lectures  on  Fichte, 
on  Lessing,  on  the  Constitution,  on  Might  and  Right,  he 
published  in  1861  the  most  important  work  he  has  left  us,  his 
"  System  of  Acquired  Rights,"  and  in  1862  a  satirical  com- 
mentary on  Julian  Schmidt's  "  History  of  German  Literature," 
which  excited  much  attention  and  amusement  at  the  time. 
His  "  System  of  Acquired  Rights  "  already  contains  the  germs 
of  his  socialist  views,  and  his  pamphlet  on  the  Constitution, 


Ferdinand  Lassalle.  103 

which  appeared  when  the  "  new  era  "  ended  and  the  era  of 
Bismarck  began,  is  written  to  disparage  the  Constitutionalism 
of  modern  Liberals.  A  paper  constitution  was  a  thing  of  no 
consequence ;  it  was  merely  declarative,  not  creative ;  the 
thing  of  real  account  was  the  distribution  of  power  as  it 
existed  in  actual  fact.  The  king  and  army  were  powers,  the 
court  and  nobility  were  powers,  the  populace  was  a  power. 
Society  was  governed  by  the  relative  strength  of  these  powers, 
as  it  existed  in  reality  and  not  by  the  paper  constitution  that 
merely  chronicled  it.  Right  is  regarded  as  merely  declarative 
of  might.  It  is  thus  easy  to  see  why  he  should  have  more 
sympathy  with  the  policy  of  Bismarck  than  with  the  Liberals  ; 
and  later  in  the  same  year  he  expounded  his  own  political 
position  very  completely  in  a  lecture  he  delivered  to  a  Working 
Men's  Society  in  Berlin,  on  "  The  Connection  between  the 
Present  Epoch  of  History  and  the  Idea  of  the  "Working  Class." 
This  lecture,  to  which  I  shall  again  revert,  was  an  epoch  in 
his  own  career.  It  led  to  a  second  Government  prosecution, 
and  a  second  imprisonment  for  political  reasons;  and  it  and 
the  prosecution  together  led  to  his  receiving  an  invitation  to 
address  a  General  Working  Men's  Congress  at  Leipzig,  in 
February,  1863,  to  which  he  responded  by  a  letter,  sketching 
the  political  programme  of  the  working  class,  which  was 
certainly  the  first  step  in  the  socialist  movement. 

Attention  was  already  being  engaged  on  the  work  of  in- 
dustrial amelioration.  The  Progressist  party,  then  including 
the  present  National  Liberals,  had,  under  the  lead  of  Schultze- 
Delitzsch,  been  promoting  trades  unions  and  co-operation  in 
an  experimental  way,  and  the  working  classes  themselves 
were  beginning  to  think  of  taking  more  concerted  action  for 
their  own  improvement.  The  Leipzig  Congress  was  projected 
by  a  circle  of  working  men,  who  considered  the  Schultze- 
Delitzsch  schemes  inadequate  to  meet  the  case.  This  was 
exactly  Lassalle's  view.  He  begins  his  letter  by  telling  the 
working  men  that  if  all  they  wanted  was  to  mitigate  some  of 
the  positive  evils  of  their  lot,  then  the  Schultze-Delitzsch 
unions,  savings  banks,  and  sick  funds  were  quite  sufficient, 
and  there  was  no  need  of  thinking  of  anything  more.  But  if 
their  aim  was  to  elevate  the  normal  condition  of  their  class. 


I04  Contemporary  Socialism. 

then  more  drastic  remedies  were  requisite ;  and,  in  the  first 
instance,  a  political  agitation  was  indispensable.  The  Leipzig 
working  men  had  discussed  the  question  of  their  relation  to 
politics  at  a  previous  congress  a  few  months  before,  and  had 
been  divided  between  abstaining  from  politics  altogether,  and 
supporting  the  Progressist  party.  Lassalle  disapproved  of 
both  these  courses.  They  could  never  achieve  the  elevation 
they  desired  till  they  got  universal  sufirage,  and  they  would 
never  get  universal  suffrage  by  backing  the  Progressists  who 
were  opposed  to  it.  He  then  explains  to  them  how  their 
normal  condition  is  permanently  depressed  at  present  by  the 
essential  laws  of  the  existing  economic  regime,  especially  by 
"  the  iron  and  cruel  law  of  necessary  wages."  The  only  real 
cure  was  co-operative  production,  the  substitution  of  associated 
labour  for  wage  labour ;  for  it  was  only  so  the  operation  of 
this  tyrannical  law  of  wages  could  be  escaped.  Now  co- 
operative production,  to  be  of  any  effective  extent,  must  be 
introduced  by  State  help  and  on  State  credit.  The  State  gave 
advances  to  start  railways,  to  develop  agriculture,  to  promote 
manufactures,  and  nobody  called  it  socialism  to  do  so.  Why, 
then,  should  people  cry  socialism  if  the  State  did  a  similar 
service  to  the  great  working  class,  who  were,  in  fact,  not  a  class, 
but  the  State  itself.  96^  per  cent,  of  the  population  were 
ground  down  by  "  the  iron  law,"  and  could  not  possibly  lift 
themselves  above  it  by  their  own  power.  They  must  ask  the 
State  to  help  them,  for  they  were  themselves  the  State,  and  the 
help  of  the  State  was  no  more  a  superseding  of  their  own  self- 
help  than  reaching  a  inan  a  ladder  superseded  his  own  climb- 
ing. State  help  was  but  self-help's  means.  Now  these  State 
advances  could  not  be  expected  till  the  working  class  acquired 
political  power  by  universal  suffrage.  Their  first  duty  was 
therefore  to  organize  themselves  and  agitate  for  universal 
suffrage ;  for  universal  suffrage  was  a  question  of  the  stomach. 
The  reception  his  letter  met  with  at  first  was  most  dis- 
couraging. The  newspapers  with  one  consent  condemned  it, 
except  a  Feudalist  organ  here  and  there  who  saw  in  it  an 
instrument  for  damaging  the  Liberals.  What  seemed  more 
ominous  was  the  opposition  of  the  working  men  themselves. 
The  Leipzig  Committee  to  whom  it  was  addressed  did  indeed 


Ferdinand  Lassalle.  105 

approve  of  it,  and  individual  voices  were  raised  in  its  favour 
elsewhere,  but  in  Berlin  the  -working  men's  clubs  rejected  it 
with  decided  warmth,  and  all  over  the  country  one  working 
men's  club  after  another  declared  against  it.  Leipzig  was 
the  only  place  in  which  his  words  seemed  to  find  any  echo, 
and  he  went  there  two  months  later  and  addressed  a  meeting 
at  which  only  7  out  of  1,300  voted  against  him.  With  this 
encouragement  he  resolved  to  go  forward,  and  founded,  on  the 
23rd  of  Ma}^,  1863,  the  General  "Working  Men's  Association 
for  the  promotion  of  universal  suffrage  by  peaceful  agitation, 
after  the  model  of  the  English  Anti-Corn  Law  League.  He 
immediately  threw  himself  with  unsparing  energy  into  the 
development  of  this  organization.  He  passed  from  place  to 
place,  delivering  speeches,  establishing  branches;  he  started 
newspapers,  wrote  pamphlets,  and  even  larger  works,  published 
tracts  by  Rodbertus,  songs  by  Herwegh,  romances  by  Von 
Schweitzer.  But  it  was  uphill  work.  South  Germany  was 
evidently  dead  to  his  ideas,  and  even  among  those  who  followed 
him  in  the  North  there  were  but  few  who  really  understood 
his  doctrines  or  concurred  in  his  methods.  Some  were  for 
more  "  heroic "  procedure,  for  raising  fighting  corps  to  free 
Poland,  to  free  Schleswig-Holstein,  to  free  oppressed  nation- 
alities anywhere.  Many  were  perfectly  impracticable  persons 
who  knew  neither  why  exactly  they  had  come  together,  nor 
where  exactly  they  would  like  to'  go.  There  were  constant 
quarrels  and  rivalries  and  jealousies  among  them,  and  he  is 
said  to  have  shown  remarkable  tact  and  patience,  and  a  genuine 
governing  faculty  in  dealing  with  them.  Lassalle's  hope  was 
to  obtain  a  membership  of  100,000 :  with  a  smaller  number 
nothing  could  be  done,  but  with  100,000  the  movement  would 
be  a  power.  In  August,  1863,  he  had  only  enrolled  1,000  after 
three  months'  energetic  labour,  which,  he  said,  "  would  have 
produced  colossal  results  among  a  people  like  the  French." 
He  was  intensely  disappointed,  and  asked,  "  When  will  this 
foolish  people  cast  aside  their  lethargy?"  but  meanwhile  re- 
pelled the  suggestion  of  the  secretary  of  the  organization  that 
it  should  be  at  once  dissolved.  In  August,  1864,  another 
year's  strenuous  work  had  raised  their  numbers  only  to 
4,610,  and  Lassalle  was  completely  disenchanted,   and  wrote 


I06  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Countess  Hatzfeldt  from  Switzerland,  shortly  before  his  death, 
that  he  was  continuing  President  of  the  Association  much 
against  his  will,  for  he  was  now  tired  of  politics,  which  was 
mere  child's  play  if  one  had  not  power.  He  seems  to  have 
been  convinced  that  the  movement  was  a  failure,  and  would 
never  become  a  force  in  the  State.  Yet  he  was  wrong ;  his 
words  had  really  taken  fire  among  the  working  classes,  and 
kindled  a  movement  which,  in  its  curious  history,  has  shown 
the  remarkable  power  of  spreading  faster  with  the  checks  it 
encounters.  It  seems  to  have  profited,  not  merely  from 
political  measures  of  repression,  but  even  from  the  internal 
dissensions  and  divisions  of  its  own  adherents,  and  some  persons 
tell  us  that  it  was  first  stimulated  into  decided  vigour  by  the 
fatal  event  which  might  have  been  expected  to  crush  it — the 
sudden  and  tragical  death  of  its  chief. 

In  the  end  of  July,  1864,  Lassalle  went  to  Switzerland 
ostensibly  for  the  Righi  whey  cure,  but  really  to  make  the 
acquaintance  of  Herr  von  Donnigsen,  Bavarian  Envoy  at 
Berne,  whose  daughter  he  had  known  in  Berlin,  and  wished 
to  obtain  in  marriage.  It  is  one  of  the  fatalities  that  entangled 
this  man's  life  in  strange  contradictions,  that  exactly  he,  a 
persona  ingratissima  to  Court  circles,  their  very  arch-enemy, 
as  they  believed,  should  have  become  bound  by  deep  mutual 
attachment  with  the  daughter  of  exactly  a  German  diplomatist, 
the  courtliest  of  the  courtly',  a  Conservative  seven  times  refined. 
They  certainly  cherished  for  one  another  a  sincere,  and  latterly 
a  passionate  afiection,  and  they  seem  to  have  been  well  fitted 
for  each  other.  Helena  von  Donnigsen  was  a  bright,  keen- 
witted, eccentric,  adventurous  young  woman  of  twenty-five, 
and  so  like  Lassalle,  even  in  appearance,  that  when  she  was 
acting  a  man's  part,  years  afterwards  (in  1874),  in  some  amateur 
performance  in  the  theatre  of  Breslau,  Lassalle's  native  town, 
many  of  the  audience  said,  here  was  Lassalle  again  as  he  was 
when  a  boy.  Learning  from  a  common  friend  in  Berlin  that 
Lassalle  was  at  the  Righi,  she  made  a  visit  to  some  friends  in 
Berne,  and  soon  after  accompanied  them  on  an  excursion  to 
that  "  popular  "  mountain.  She  inquired  for  Lassalle  at  the 
hotel,  and  he  joined  the  party  to  the  summit.  She  knew  her 
parents  would  be  opposed  to  the  match,  but  felt  certain  that 


Ferdinand  Lassalle.  107 

her  lover,  with  his  gifts  and  charms,  would  be  able  to  win 
them  over,  and  it  was  accordingly  agreed  that  when  she 
returned  to  Geneva,  Lassalle  should  go  there  too,  and  press  his 
suit  in  person.  The  parents,  however,  were  inexorable,  and 
refused  to  see  him  ;  and  the  young  lady  in  despair  fled  from 
her  father's  house  to  her  lover's  lodging,  and  urged  him  to 
elope  with  her.  Lassalle  calmly  led  her  back  to  her  father's 
roof,  with  a  control  which  some  writers  think  quite  inexplicable 
in  him,  but  which  was  probably  due  to  his  still  believing  that 
he  would  be  able  to  talk  the  parents  round  if  he  got  the 
chance,  and  to  his  desire  to  try  constitutional  means  before 
resorting  to  revolutionary.  Helena  was  locked  in  her  room 
for  days  alone  with  her  excited  brain  and  panting  heart.  For 
days,  father,  mother,  sister,  brother,  all  came  and  laid  before 
her  what  ruin  she  was  bringing  on  the  family  for  a  mere  selfish 
whim  of  her  own.  If  she  married  a  man  so  objectionable  to 
people  in  power,  her  father  would  be  obliged  to  resign  his 
post,  her  brother  could  never  look  for  one,  and  her  sister,  who 
had  just  been  engaged  to  a  Count,  would,  of  course,  have  to 
give  up  her  engagement.  She  was  in  despair,  but  ultimately 
submitted  passively  to  write  to  Lassalle,  desiring  him  to  con- 
sider the  matter  ended,  and  submitted  equally  passively  (for 
she  informs  us  herself)  to  accept  the  hand  of  Herr  von  Raco- 
witza,  a  young  Wallachian  Boyar,  whom  she  had  indeed  been 
previously  engaged  to,  and  sincerely  liked  and  respected, 
without  m  the  eminent  sense  loving  him.  Lassalle  had  mean- 
while wrought  himself  into  a  fury  of  excitement.  Enraged 
by  her  parents'  opposition,  enraged  still  more  by  their  refusal 
even  to  treat  with  him,  enraged  above  all  by  his  belief  that 
their  daughter  was  being  illegitimately  constrained,  he  wrote 
here,  wrote  there,  tried  to  get  the  foreign  minister  at  Munich 
to  interfere,  to  get  Bishop  Ketteler  to  use  his  influence,  pro- 
mised even  to  turn  Catholic  to  please  the  Donnigsens,  forget- 
ting that  they  were  Protestants.  AH  in  vain.  At  last  two 
of  his  friends  waited  by  appointment  on  Herr  von  Donnigsen, 
and  heard  from  Helena's  own  Hps  that  she  was  to  be  married 
to  the  Boyar,  and  wished  the  subject  no  more  mentioned. 
She  now  tells  us  that  she  did  this  in  sheer  weariness  of  mind, 
and  with  a  confused  hope  that  somehow  or  other  the  present 


loS  Contemporary  Socialism. 

storm  would  blow  past,  and  she  might  have  her  Lassalle  after 
all.  Lassalle,  however,  was  overcome  with  chagrin ;  and 
though  he  always  held  that  a  democrat  should  not  fight  duels, 
and  had  got  Robespierre's  stick,  which  he  usually  carried,  as 
a  present  for  having  declined  one,  he  now  sent  a  challenge 
both  to  the  father  and  the  bridegroom.  The  latter  accepted. 
The  duel  was  fought.  Lassalle  was  fatally  wounded,  and  died 
two  days  afl:er,  on  the  31st  August,  1864,  at  the  age  of  39. 
Helena  married  Herr  von  Racowitza  shortly  afterwards,  but  he 
was  already  seized  with  consumption,  and  she  says  she  found 
great  comfort,  after  the  tumult  and  excitement  of  the  Lassalle 
episode,  in  nursing  him  during  the  few  months  he  lived  after 
their  marriage. 

The  body  was  sent  back  to  Germany,  after  funeral  orations 
from  revolutionists  of  all  countries  and  colours,  and  the  Coun- 
tess Hatzfeldt  had  made  arrangements  for  similar  funeral 
celebrations  at  every  halting  place  along  the  route  to  Berlin, 
where  she  meant  it  to  be  buried,  but  at  Cologne  it  was  inter- 
cepted by  the  police  on  behalf  of  the  Lassalle  family,  and 
carried  quietly  to  Breslau,  where,  after  life's  fitful  fever,  he 
was  laid  silently  with  his  fathers  in  the  Jewish  burying- 
ground  of  his  native  place.  Fate,  however,  had  not  even  yet 
done  with  him.  It  followed  him  beyond  the  tomb  to  throw 
one  more  element  of  the  bizarre  into  his  strangely  compounded 
history.  Lest  the  death  of  the  leader  should  prove  fatal  to  the 
cause,  the  Committee  of  the  General  Working  Men's  Associa- 
tion determined  to  turn  it,  if  possible,  into  a  source  of  strength, 
as  B.  Becker,  his  successor  in  the  president's  chair,  informs  us, 
"  by  carrying  it  into  the  domain  of  faith."  Lassalle  was  not 
dead,  but  only  translated  to  a  higher  and  surer  leadership.  A 
Lassalle  ciiltus  was  instituted,  and  Becker  says  that  many  a 
German  working  man  believed  that  he  died  for  them,  and  that 
he  was  yet  to  come  again  to  save  them.  This  singular 
apotheosis,  which  is  neither  creditable  to  the  honesty  of  the 
leaders  of  the  socialist  movement,  nor  to  the  intelligence  of  its 
rank  and  file,  was  kept  up  by  periodical  celebrations  among 
those  of  the  German  socialists  who  are  generally  known  as  the 
orthodox  Lassalleans,  down,  at  least,  to  the  time  of  the  Anti- 
Socialist  Law  of  1878. 


Ferdinand  Las  sal le.  109 

Lassalle's  doctrines  are  mainly  contained  in  his  lecture  on 
"  The  Present  Age  and  the  Idea  of  the  "Working  Class,"  which 
he  delivered  in  1862,  and  published  in  1863,  under  the  title  of 
the  "  "Working  Men's  Programme,"  and  in  his  "  Herr  Bastiat- 
Schultze  von  Delitzsch,  der  Oekonomische  Julian ;  oder 
Capital  und  Arbeit,"  Berlin,  1864. 

In  the  "  Working  Men's  Programme,"  the  question  of  the 
emancipation  of  the  working  class  is  approached  and  contem- 
plated from  the  standpoint  of  the  Hegelian  philosophy  of 
history.  There  are,  it  declares,  three  successive  stages  of 
evolution  in  modern  history.  First,  the  period  before  1789, 
the  feudal  period,  when  all  public  power  was  vested  in,  exer- 
cised by,  and  employed  for  the  benefit  of,  the  landed  class.  It 
was  a  period  of  privileges  and  exemptions,  which  were  enjoyed 
by  the  landed  interests  exclusively,  and  there  prevailed  a 
strong  social  contempt  for  all  labour  and  employment  not 
connected  with  the  land.  Second,  the  period  1789-1848,  the 
boitrgeois  period,  in  which  personal  estate  received  equal  rights 
and  recognition  with  real,  but  in  which  political  power  was 
still  based  on  property  qualifications,  and  legislation  was 
governed  by  the  interests  of  the  bourgeoisie.  Third,  the  period 
since  1848,  the  age  of  the  working  class,  which  is,  however, 
only  yet  struggling  to  the  birth  and  to  legal  recognition.  The 
characteristic  of  this  new  period  is,  that  it  will  for  the  first 
time  give  labour  its  rights,  and  that  it  will  be  dominated  by 
the  ideas,  aspirations,  and  interests  of  the  great  labouring 
class.  Their  time  has  already  come,  and  the  bourgeois  age  is 
already  past  in  fact,  though  it  still  lingers  in  law.  It  is 
always  so.  The  feudal  period  had  in  reality  come  to  an  end 
before  the  Revolution.  A  revolution  is  always  declarative  and 
never  creative.  It  takes  place  first  in  the  heart  of  society,  and 
is  only  sealed  and  ratified  by  the  outbreak.  "  It  is  impossible 
to  make  a  revolution,  it  is  possible  only  to  give  external  legal 
sanction  and  effect  to  a  revolution  already  contained  in  the 
actual  circumstances  of  society.  ...  To  seek  to  make  a 
revolution  is  the  folly  of  immature  men  who  have  no  con- 
sideration for  the  laws  of  history  ;  and  for  the  same  reason  it 
is  immature  and  puerile  to  try  to  stem  a  revolution  that  has 
already  completed  itself  in  the  interior  of  society.     If  a  revolu- 


1 1  o  Contemporary  Socialism. 

tion  exists  in  fact,  it  cannot  possibly  be  prevented  from 
ultimately  existing  in  law."  It  is  idle,  too,  to  reproach  those 
who  desire  to  effect  this  transition  with  being  revolutionary. 
They  are  merely  midwives  who  assist  in  bringing  to  the  birth  a 
future  with  which  society  is  already  pregnant.  Now,  it  is  this 
midwife  service  that  Lassalle  believed  the  working  class  at 
present  required.  He  says  of  the  fourth  estate  what  Sieyes 
said  of  the  third,  What  is  the  fourth  estate  ?  Nothing  ? 
What  ought  the  fourth  estate  to  be  ?  Everything.  And  it 
ought  to  be  so  in  law,  because  it  is  so  already  in  fact.  The 
bourgeoisie,  in  overthrowing  the  privileges  of  the  feudal  class, 
had  almost  immediately  become  a  privileged  class  itself.  At 
so  early  a  period  of  the  revolution  as  the  3rd  of  September, 
1791,  a  distinction  was  introduced  between  active  and  passive 
citizens.  The  active  citizen  was  the  citizen  who  paid  direct 
taxes,  and  had  therefore  a  right  to  vote  ;  the  passive  citizen 
was  he  who  paid  no  direct  taxes,  and  had  no  right  to  vote. 
The  effect  of  this  distinction  was  to  exclude  the  whole  labour- 
ing classes  from  the  franchise  ;  and  under  the  July  Monarchy, 
while  the  real  nation  consisted  of  some  thirty  millions,  the 
legal  nation  {pays  legal),  the  people  legally  possessed  of  poli- 
tical rights,  amounted  to  no  more  than  200,000,  whom  the 
Government  found  it  only  too  easy  to  manage  and  corrupt. 
The  revolution  of  1848  was  simply  a  revolt  against  this 
injustice.  It  was  a  revolt  of  the  fourth  estate  against  the 
privileges  of  the  third,  as  the  first  revolution  was  a  revolt 
of  the  third  against  the  privileges  of  the  other  two.  Nor 
were  the  privileges  which  the  bourgeoisie  had  contrived 
to  acquire  confined  to  political  rights  alone;  they  included 
also  fiscal  exemptions.  According  to  the  latest  statistical 
returns,  it  appeared  that  five-sixths  of  the  revenue  of  Prussia 
came  from  indirect  taxation,  and  indirect  taxes  were  always 
taken  disproportionately  out  of  the  pockets  of  the  working 
class.  A  man  might  be  twenty  times  richer  than  another,  but 
he  did  not  therefore  consume  twenty  times  the  amount  of 
bread,  salt,  or  beer.  Taxation  ought  to  be  in  ratio  of  means, 
and  indirect  taxation — so  much  favoured  by  the  bourgeoisie — 
was  simply  an  expedient  for  saving  the  rich  at  the  expense  of 
the  poor. 


Ferdinand  Lassalle. 


III. 


Now,  the  revolution  of  1848  -was  a  fight  for  the  emancipation 
of  the  working  clr.ss  from  this  unequal  distribution  of  political 
rights  and  burdens.  The  working  class  was  really  not  a  class 
at  all,  but  was  the  nation  ;  and  the  aim  of  the  State  should  be 
their  amelioration.  "What  is  the  State?"  asks  Lassalle. 
"  You  are  the  State,"  he  replies.  "  You  are  ninety-six  per 
cent,  of  the  population.  All  political  power  ought  to  be  of  you, 
and  through  you,  and  for  you ;  and  your  good  and  ameliora- 
tion ought  to  be  the  aim  of  the  State.  It  ought  to  be  so,  be- 
cause your  good  is  not  a  class  interest,  but  is  the  national 
interest."  The  fourth  estate  differs  from  the  feudal  interest, 
and  differs  from  the  hourgeohie^  not  merely  in  that  it  is  not  a 
privileged  class,  but  in  that  it  cannot  possibly  become  one.  It 
cannot  degenerate,  as  the  bourgeoisie  had  done,  into  a  privi- 
leged and  exclusive  caste  ;  because,  consisting  as  it  does  of  the 
great  body  of  the  people,  its  class  interest  and  the  common 
good  are  identical,  or  at  least  harmonious.  "  Your  affair  is  the 
affair  of  mankind  ;  your  personal  interest  moves  and  beats  with 
the  pulse  of  history,  with  the  living  principle  of  moral  develop- 
ment." 

Such  then  is  the  idea  of  the  working  class,  which  is,  or  is 
destined  to  be,  the  ruling  principle  of  society  in  the  present 
era  of  the  world.  Its  supremacy  will  have  important  con- 
sequences, both  ethical  and  political.  Ethically,  the  working 
class  is  less  selfish  than  the  classes  above  it,  simply  because 
it  has  no  exclusive  privileges  to  maintain.  The  necessity  of 
maintaining  privileges  always  develops  an  assertion  of  personal 
interest  in  exact  proportion  to  the  amount  of  privilege  to  be 
defended,  and  that  is  why  the  selfishness  of  a  class  constantly 
exceeds  the  individual  selfishness  of  the  members  that  compose 
it.  Now  under  the  happier  regime  of  the  idea  of  labour,  there 
would  be  no  exclusive  interests  or  privileges,  and  therefore  less 
selfishness.  Adam  would  delve  and  Eve  would  spin,  and,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  each  would  work  more  for  the  whole, 
and  the  whole  would  work  more  for  each.  Politically,  too,  the 
change  would  be  remarkable  and  beneficial.  The  working 
class  has  a  quite  different  idea  of  the  State  and  its  aim  from 
the  bourgeoisie.  The  latter  see  no  other  use  in  the  State  but  to 
protect  personal  freedom  and  property.     The  State  is  a  mere 


112  Contemporary  Socialism. 

night-watchman,  and,  if  there  were  no  thieves  and  robbers, 
would  be  a  superfluity ;  its  occupation  would  be  gone.  Its 
whole  duty  is  exhausted  when  it  guarantees  to  ever}^  individual 
the  unimpeded  exercise  of  his  activity  as  far  as  consistent  with 
the  like  right  of  his  neighbours.  Even  from  its  own  point  of 
view  this  bourgeois  theory  of  the  State  fails  to  effect  its  pur- 
pose. Instead  of  securing  equality  of  freedom,  it  only  secures 
equality  of  right  to  freedom.  If  all  men  were  equal  in  fact, 
this  might  answer  well  enough,  but  since  they  are  not,  the 
result  is  simply  to  place  the  weak  at  the  mercy  of  the 
powerful.  Now  the  working  class  have  an  entirely  different 
view  of  the  State's  mission  from  this.  They  say  the  protection 
of  an  equality  of  right  to  freedom  is  an  insufficient  aim  for  the 
State  in  a  morally  ordered  community.  It  ought  to  be  sup- 
plemented by  the  securing  of  solidarity  of  interests  and  com- 
munity and  reciprocity  of  development.  History  all  along  is 
an  incessant  struggle  with  Nature,  a  victory  over  misery, 
ignorance,  poverty,  powerlessness  —  i.e.,  over  unfreedom, 
thraldom,  restrictions  of  all  kinds.  The  perpetual  conquest 
over  these  restrictions  is  the  development  of  freedom,  is  the 
growth  of  culture.  Now  this  is  never  effected  by  each  man 
for  himself.  It  is  the  function  of  the  State  to  do  it.  The 
State  is  the  union  of  individuals  into  a  moral  whole  which 
multiplies  a  millionfold  the  aggregate  of  the  powers  of  each. 
The  end  and  function  of  the  State  is  not  merely  to  guard 
freedom,  but  to  develop  it ;  to  put  the  individuals  who  com- 
pose it  in  a  position  to  attain  and  maintain  such  objects,  such 
levels  of  existence,  such  stages  of  culture,  power,  and  freedom, 
as  they  would  have  been  incapable  of  reaching  by  their  own 
individual  efforts  alone.  The  State  is  the  great  agency  for 
guiding  and  training  the  human  race  to  positive  and  progres- 
sive development ;  in  other  words,  for  bringing  human  destiny 
{i.e.,  the  culture  of  which  man  as  man  is  susceptible)  to  real 
shape  and  form  in  actual  existence.  Not  freedom,  but  develop- 
ment is  now  the  keynote.  The  State  must  take  a  positive 
part,  proportioned  to  its  immense  capacity,  in  the  great  work 
which,  as  he  has  said,  constitutes  history,  and  must  forward 
man's  progressive  conquest  over  misery,  ignorance,  poverty, 
and  restrictions  of  evei-y  sort.     This  is  the  purpose,  the  essence, 


Ferdinand  Lassalle,  113 

the  moral  nature  of  the  State,  which  she  can  never  entirely 
abrogate,  without  ceasing  to  be,  and  which  she  has  indeed 
always  been  obliged,  by  the  very  force  of  things,  more  or  less 
to  fulfil,  often  without  her  conscious  consent,  and  sometimes 
in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  her  leaders.  In  a  word,  the  State 
must,  by  the  union  of  all,  help  each  to  his  full  development. 
This  was  the  earnest  and  noble  idea  of  18i8.  It  is  the  idea  of 
the  new  age,  the  age  of  labour,  and  it  cannot  fail  to  have  a 
most  important  and  beneficial  bearing  on  the  course  of  politics 
and  legislation  whenever  it  is  permitted  to  have  free  operation 
in  that  sphere  by  means  of  universal  and  direct  suffrage. 

This  exposition  of  Lassalle's  teaching  in  his  "Working  Men's 
Programme  "  already  furnishes  us  with  the  transition  to  his 
economic  views.  Every  age  of  the  world,  he  held,  has  its  own 
ruling  idea.  The  idea  of  the  working  class  is  the  ruling  idea 
of  the  new  epoch  we  have  now  entered  on,  and  that  idea  im- 
plies that  every  man  is  entitled  to  a  meiifichemcurdiges  Dasein, 
to  an  existence  worthy  of  his  moral  destiny,  and  that  the  State 
is  bound  to  make  this  a  governing  consideration  in  its  legislative 
and  executive  work.  Man's  destiny  is  to  progressive  civilization, 
and  a  condition  of  society  which  makes  progressive  civilization 
the  exclusive  property  of  the  few,  and  practically  debars  the 
vast  mass  of  the  people  from  participation  in  it,  stands  in  the 
present  age  self-condemned.  It  no  longer  corresponds  to  its 
own  idea.  Society  has  long  since  declared  no  man  shall  be 
enslaved ;  society  has  more  recently  declared  no  man  shall  be 
ignorant ;  society  now  declares  no  man  shall  be  without  pro- 
perty. He  cannot  be  really  free  without  property  any  more 
than  he  can  be  really  free  without  knowledge.  He  has  been 
released  successively  from  a  state  of  legal  dependence  and  from 
a  state  of  intellectual  dependence  ;  he  must  now  be  released 
from  a  state  of  economic  dependence.  This  is  his  final  eman- 
cipation, which  is  necessary  to  enable  him  to  reap  any  fruits 
from  the  other  two,  and  it  cannot  take  place  without  a  complete 
transformation  of  present  industrial  arrangements.  It  is  a  com- 
mon mistake,  he  said,  to  think  that  socialists  take  their  stand 
on  equality.  The}'  really  take  their  stand  on  freedom.  They 
argue  that  the  positive  side  of  freedom  is  development,  and  if 
every  man  has  a  right  to  freedom,  then  every  man  has  a  right 

I 


114  Contemporary  Socialism. 

to  the  possibility  of  development.  From  this  right,  however, 
they  allege  the  existing  industrial  sj'stem  absolutely  excludes 
the  great  majority.  The  freeman  cannot  realize  his  freedom, 
the  individual  cannot  realize  his  individuality,  without  a  cer- 
tain external  economic  basis  of  work  and  enjoyment,  and  the 
best  way  to  furnish  him  with  this  is  to  clothe  him  in  various 
ways  with  collective  property. 

Lassalle's  argument,  however,  is  still  more  specific  than  this. 
In  the  beginning  of  his  "  Herr  Bastiat-Schultze,"  he  quotes  a 
passage  from  his  previous  work  on  "  The  System  of  Acquired 
Rights,"  which  he  informs  us  he  had  intended  to  expand  into 
a  systematic  treatise  on  "  The  Principles  of  Scientific  National 
Economy."  This  intention  he  was  actually  preparing  to  fulfil 
when  the  Leipzig  invitation  and  letter  diverted  him  at  once 
into  practical  agitation.  He  regrets  that  circumstances  had 
thus  not  permitted  the  practical  agitation  to  be  preceded  by 
the  theoretical  codex  which  should  be  the  basis  for  it,  but  adds 
that  the  substance  of  his  theory  is  contained  in  this  polemic 
against  Schultze-Delitzsch,  though  the  form  of  its  exposition 
is  considerably  modified  by  his  plan  of  following  the  ideas  of 
Schultze's  "  "Working  Men's  Catechism,"  and  by  his  purpose 
of  answering  Schultze's  misplaced  taunt  of  "  half  knowledge  " 
by  trying  to  extinguish  the  economic  pretensions  of  the 
latter  as  completely  as  he  had  done  the  literary  pretensions  of 
Julian  Schmidt.  "  Every  line  I  write,"  says  Lassalle,  with  a 
characteristic  finality  of  self-confidence,  "  I  write  armed  with 
the  whole  culture  of  my  century  "  ;  and  at  any  rate  Schultze- 
Delitzsch  was  far  his  inferior  in  economic  as  in  other  know- 
ledge. In  the  passage  to  which  I  have  referred,  Lassalle  says, 
"  The  world  is  now  face  to  face  with  a  new  social  question,  the 
question  whether,  since  there  is  no  longer  any  property  in  the 
immediate  use  of  another  man,  there  should  still  exist  property 
in  his  mediate  exploitation — /.e.,  whether  the  free  realization 
and  development  of  one's  power  and  labour  should  be  the 
exclusive  private  property  of  the  owner  of  the  instruments  and 
advances  necessary  for  labour — i.e.,  of  capital ;  and  whether 
the  employer  as  such,  and  apart  from  the  remuneration  of  his 
own  intellectual  labour  of  management,  should  be  permitted 
to  have  property  in  the  value  of  other  people's  labour — i.e., 


Ferdinand  Lassalle.  1 1 5 

whether  he  ought  to  receive  what  is  known  as  the  premium 
or  profit  of  capital,  consisting  of  the  difference  between  the 
selHng  price  of  the  product  and  the  sum  of  the  wages  and 
salaries  of  all  kinds  of  labour,  manual  and  mental,  that  have 
contributed  to  its  production." 

His  standing-point  here,  again,  as  always,  belongs  to  the 
philosophy  of  history — to  the  idea  of  historical  evolution  with 
which  his  Hegelianism  had  early  penetrated  him.  The  course 
of  legal  history  has  been  one  of  gradual  but  steady  contraction 
of  the  sphere  of  private  property  in  the  interests  of  personal 
freedom  and  development.  The  ancient  system  of  slavery, 
under  which  the  labourer  was  the  absolute  and  complete 
property  of  his  master,  was  followed  b}^  the  feudal  s^-stem  of 
servitudes,  under  which  he  was  still  only  partially  proprietor 
of  himself,  but  was  bound  by  law  to  a  particular  lord  by  one 
or  more  of  a  most  manifold  series  of  specific  services.  These 
systems  have  been  successively  abolished.  There  is  no  longer 
property  in  man  or  in  the  use  of  man.  No  man  can  now  be 
either  inherited  or  sold  in  whole  or  in  part.  He  is  his  own, 
and  his  power  of  labour  is  his  own.  But  he  is  still  far  from 
being  in  full  possession  of  himself  or  of  his  labour.  He  cannot 
work  without  materials  to  work  on  and  instruments  to  work 
with,  and  for  these  the  modern  labourer  is  more  dependent 
than  ever  labourer  was  before  on  the  private  owners  in  whose 
hands  they  have  accumulated.  And  the  consequence  is  that 
under  existing  industrial  arrangements  the  modern  labourer 
has  no  more  individual  property  in  his  labour  than  the  ancient 
slave  had.  He  is  obliged  to  part  with  the  whole  value  of  his 
labour,  and  content  himself  with  bare  subsistence  in  return. 
It  is  in  this  sense  that  socialist  writers  maintain  property  to 
be  theft — not  that  subjectively  the  proprietors  are  thieves,  but 
that  objectively,  under  the  exigencies  of  a  system  of  competi- 
tion, they  cannot  help  offering  workmen,  and  workmen  cannot 
help  accepting,  wages  far  under  the  true  value  of  their  labour. 
Labour  is  the  source  of  all  wealth,  for  the  value  of  anything — 
that  which  makes  it  wealth — is,  on  the  economists'  own  show- 
ing, only  another  name  for  the  amount  of  labour  put  into  the 
making  of  it ;  and  labour  is  the  only  ground  on  which  modern 
opponents  of  socialism — Thiers  and  Bastiat,  for  example — think 


1 1 6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  right  of  individual  property  can  be  established.  Yet 
on  the  methods  of  distribution  of  wealth  that  now  exist,  in- 
dividual property  is  not  founded  on  this  its  only  justifiable 
basis,  and  the  aim  of  socialists  is  to  emancipate  the  system  of 
distribution  from  the  influence  of  certain  unconscious  forces 
which,  as  they  allege,  at  present  disturb  it,  and  to  bring  back 
individual  property  for  the  first  time  to  its  natural  and  right- 
ful foundation — labour.  Their  aim  is  not  to  abolish  private 
property,  but  to  purify  it,  by  means  of  some  systematic  social 
regulation  which  shall  give  each  man  a  share  more  con- 
formable with  his  personal  merit  and  contribution.  Even  if 
no  question  is  raised  about  the  past,  it  is  plain  that  labour  is 
every  day  engaged  in  making  more  new  property.  Millions 
of  labouring  men  are,  day  after  day,  converting  their  own 
brain,  muscle,  and  sinew  into  useful  commodities,  into  value, 
into  wealth.  Now,  the  problem  of  the  age,  according  to 
Lassalle,  is  this,  whether  this  unmade  property  of  the  future 
should  not  become  genuine  labour  property,  and  its  value 
remain  greatly  more  than  at  present  in  the  hands  that 
actually  produced  it. 

This,  he  holds,  can  only  be  done  by  a  fundamental  recon- 
struction of  the  present  industrial  system,  and  by  new  methods 
of  determining  the  remuneration  of  the  labouring  class.  For 
there  is  a  profound  contradiction  in  the  present  system.  It 
is  unprecedentedly  communistic  in  production,  and  unpre- 
cedentedly  individualistic  in  distribution.  Now  there  ought  to 
be  as  real  a  joint  participation  in  the  product,  as  there  is 
already  a  joint  participation  in  the  work.  Capital  must  be- 
come the  servant  of  labour  instead  of  its  master,  profits  must 
disappear,  industry  must  be  conducted  more  on  the  mutual 
instead  of  the  proprietary  principle,  and  the  instruments  of 
production  be  taken  out  of  private  hands  and  turned  into 
collective  or  even,  it  may  be,  national  property.  In  the  old 
epoch,  before  1789,  industrial  society  was  governed  by  the 
principle  of  solidarity  without  freedom  ;  in  the  period  since 
1789,  by  freedom  without  solidarity,  which  has  been  even 
worse ;  in  the  epoch  now  opening,  the  principle  must  be 
solidarity  in  freedom. 

Partisans  of  the  present  system  object  to  any  social  inter- 


Ferdinand  Lassalle.  1 1 7 

ference  with  the  distribution  of  wealth,  but  they  forget  how 
much — how  entirely — that  distribution  is  even  now  effected 
by  social  methods.  The  present  arrangement  of  property, 
says  Lassalle,  is,  in  fact,  nothing  but  an  anarchic  and  unjust 
socialism.  How  do  you  define  socialism  ?  he  asks.  Socialism 
is  a  distribution  of  property  by  social  channels.  Now  this  is 
the  condition  of  things  that  exists  to-day.  There  exists,  under 
the  guise  of  individual  production,  a  distribution  of  property 
by  means  of  purely  objective  movements  of  society.  For  there 
is  a  certain  natural  solidarity  in  things  as  they  are,  only  being 
under  no  rational  control,  it  operates  as  a  wild  natural  force, 
as  a  kind  of  fate  destroying  all  rational  freedom  and  all  rational 
responsibility  in  economic  aifairs.  In  a  sense,  there  never 
was  more  solidarity  than  there  is  now ;  there  never  was  so 
much  interdependence.  Under  the  large  system  of  production, 
masses  of  workmen  are  simply  so  many  component  parts  of  a 
single  great  machine  driven  by  the  judgment  or  recklessness 
of  an  individual  capitalist.  "With  modern  facilities  of  inter- 
communication, too,  the  trade  of  the  world  is  one  and  indivisible. 
A  deficient  col  ton  harvest  in  America  carries  distress  into 
thousands  of  households  in  Lyons,  in  Elberfeld,  in  Manchester. 
A  discovery  of  gold  in  Australia  raises  all  prices  in  Europe. 
A  simple  telegram  stating  that  rape  prospects  are  good  in 
Holland  instantly  deprives  the  oil  workers  of  Prussia  of  half 
their  wages.  So  far  from  there  being  any  truth  in  the  con- 
tention of  Schultze-Delitzsch,  that  the  existing  system  is  the 
only  sound  one,  because  it  is  founded  on  the  principle  of 
making  every  man  responsible  for  his  own  doings,  the  very 
opposite  is  the  cas3.  The  present  system  makes  every  man 
responsible  for  what  he  does  not  do.  Li  consequence  of  the 
unprecedented  interconnection  of  modern  industry,  the  sum  of 
conditions  needed  to  be  known  for  its  successful  guidance  have 
so  immensely  increased  that  rational  calculation  is  scarcely 
possible,  and  men  are  enriched  without  any  merit,  and  im- 
poverished without  any  fault.  According  to  Lassalle,  in  the 
absence  as  yet  of  an  adequate  system  of  commercial  statistics, 
the  number  of  known  conditions  is  always  much  smaller  than 
the  number  of  unknown,  and  the  consequence  is,  that  trade  is 
very  much  a  game  of  chance.     Everything  in  modern  indus- 


1 1 8  Contemporary  Socialism. 

trial  economy  is  ruled  by  social  connections,  by  favourable  or 
unfavourable  situations  and  opportunities.  Conjtinctur  is  its 
great  Orphic  chain.  Chance  is  its  Providence — Chance  and 
his  sole  and  equally  blind  counsellor,  Speculation.  Every  age 
and  condition  of  society,  says  Lassalle,  tends  to  develop  some 
phenomenon  that  more  particularly  expresses  its  type  and 
spirit,  and  the  purest  type  of  capitalistic  society  is  the 
financial  speculator.  Capital,  he  maintains,  is  a  historical  and 
not  a  logical  category,  and  the  capitalist  is  a  modern  product. 
He  is  the  development,  not  of  the  ancient  Croesus  or  the 
mediaeval  lord,  but  of  the  usurer,  who  has  taken  their  place, 
but  was  in  their  lifetime  hardly  a  respectable  person.  Croesus 
was  a  very  rich  man,  but  he  was  not  a  capitalist,  for  he  could 
do  anything  with  his  wealth  except  capitalize  it.  The  idea  of 
money  making  money  and  of  capital  being  self-productive, 
which  Lassalle  takes  to  be  the  governing  idea  of  the  present 
order  of  things,  was,  he  says,  quite  foreign  to  earUer  periods. 
Industry  is  now  entirely  under  the  control  of  capitalists  specu- 
lating for  profit.  No  one  now  makes  things  first  of  all  for  his 
own  use — as  mythologizing  economists  relate — and  then  ex- 
changes what  is  over  for  the  like  redundant  work  of  his 
neighbours.  Men  make  everything  first  of  all,  and  last  of  all, 
for  other  people's  use,  and  they  make  it  at  the  direction  and 
expense  of  a  capitalist  who  is  speculating  for  money,  and,  in 
the  absence  of  systematic  statistics,  is  speculating  in  the  dark. 
Chance  and  social  connections  make  him  rich,  chance  and 
social  connections  bring  him  to  ruin.  Capital  is  not  the  re- 
sult of  saving,  it  is  the  result  of  Conjunctur ;  and  so  are  the 
vicissitudes  and  crises  that  have  so  immensely  increased  in 
modern  times.  What  you  have  now,  therefore,  says  Lassalle, 
is  a  system  of  socialism  ;  wealth  is  at  present  distributed  by 
social  means,  and  by  nothing  else  ;  and  all  he  contends  for  is, 
as  he  says,  to  substitute  a  regulated  and  rational  socialism  for 
this  anarchic  and  natural  socialism  that  now  exists. 

His  charge  against  the  present  system,  however,  is  more 
than  that  it  is  anarchic  ;  he  maintains  it  to  be  unjust — organ- 
ically and  hopelessly  unjust.  The  labourer's  back  is  the  green 
table  on  which  the  whole  game  is  played,  and  all  losses  are  in 
the  end  sustained  by  him.     A  slightly  unfavourable  turn  of 


Ferdinand  Lassalle.  119 

things  sends  him  at  once  into  want,  while  even  a  considerably 
favourable  one  brings  him  no  corresponding  advantage,  for, 
according  to  all  economists,  wages  are  always  the  last  thing 
to  rise  with  a  reviving  trade.  The  present  system  is,  in  fact, 
incapable  of  doing  the  labourer  justice,  and  would  not  suffer 
employers  to  do  so  even  if  they  wished.  Injustice  is  bred  in 
its  very  bone  and  blood.  In  this  contention  Lassalle  builds 
his  whole  argument  on  premises  drawn  from  the  accepted 
economic  authorities.  Socialist  economics,  he  says,  is  nothing 
but  a  battle  against  Ricardo,  whom  he  describes  as  the  last  and 
most  representative  development  of  bourgeois  economics ;  and 
it  fights  the  battle  with  Ricardo's  own  weapons,  and  on 
E-icardo's  own  ground.  There  are  two  principles  in  particular 
of  which  it  makes  much  use — Ricardo's  law  of  value  and 
Ricardo's  law  of  natural  or  necessary  wages. 

Ricardo's  law  of  value  is  that  the  value  of  a  commodity,  or 
the  quantity  of  any  other  commodity  for  which  it  will  exchange, 
depends  on  the  relative  quantity  of  labour  which  is  necessary 
for  its  production,  and  not  on  the  greater  or  less  compensation 
which  is  paid  for  that  labour.  Value  is  thus  resolved  into  so 
much  labour,  or  what  is  the  same  thing,  so  much  time  con- 
sumed in  labour,  mental  and  manual,  upon  the  commodity. 
This  reduction  of  value  to  quantity  of  time  is  reckoned  by 
Lassalle  the  one  great  merit  of  Ricardo  and  the  English 
economists.  Ricardo,  however,  strictly  limited  his  law  to 
commodities  that  admitted  of  indefinite  multiplication,  the 
value  of  other  commodities  being,  he  held,  regulated  by  their 
scarcity ;  and  he  confined  it  to  the  normal  value  of  the  com- 
modities only,  the  fluctuations  of  their  market-price  depending 
on  other  considerations.  But  Lassalle  seeks  to  make  it  cover 
these  cases  also  by  means  of  a  distinction  he  draws  between 
individual  time  of  labour,  and  socially  necessary  time  of 
labour.  According  to  this  distinction,  what  constitutes  the 
value  of  a  product  is  not  the  time  actually  taken  or  required 
by  the  person  who  made  it ;  for  he  may  have  been  indolent  or 
slow,  or  may  not  have  used  the  means  and  appliances  which 
the  age  he  lived  in  afforded  him.  What  constitutes  value  is 
the  average  time  of  labour  socially  necessary,  the  time  required 
by  labour  of  average  efficiency  using   the  methods   the  age 


I20  Contemporary  Socialism. 

supplies.  If  the  commodity  can  be  produced  in  an  hour,  an 
hour's  work  will  be  its  value,  though  you  have  taken  ten  to 
produce  it  by  slower  methods.  So  far  there  is  nothing  very 
remarkable,  but  Lassalle  goes  on  to  argue  that  you  may  waste 
your  time  not  merely  by  using  methods  that  societj'  has 
superseded,  but  by  producing  commodities  that  society  no 
longer  wants.  You  go  on  making  shoe-buckles  after  they 
have  gone  out  of  fashion,  and  you  can  get  nothing  for  them. 
They  have  no  value.  And  why  ?  Because,  while  they  indeed 
represent  labour,  they  do  not  represent  socially  necessary 
labour.  So  again  with  over-production  :  you  may  produce  a 
greater  amount  of  a  commodity  than  society  requires  at  the 
time.  The  value  of  the  commodity  falls.  Why?  Because  while 
it  has  cost  as  much  actual  labour  as  before,  it  has  not  cost 
so  much  socially  necessary  labour.  In  fact,  the  labour  it  has 
taken  has  been  socially  unnecessary,  for  there  was  no  demand 
for  the  product.  On  the  other  hand — and  we  are  entitled  to 
make  this  expansion  of  Lassalle's  argument — take  the  case  of 
under-production,  of  deficient  supply.  Prices  rise.  What  is 
usually  known  as  a  scarcity  value  is  conferred  on  commodities. 
But  this  scarcity  value  Lassalle  converts  into  a  labour  value  ; 
the  commodity  is  produced  by  the  same  individual  labour,  but 
the  labour  is  more  socially  necessary.  In  plain  English,  there 
is  more  demand  for  the  product. 

Lassalle's  distinction  is  thus  an  ingenious  invention  for 
expressing  rarity  value  in  terms  of  labour  value.  It  has  no 
theoretical  importance,  but  is  of  some  practical  service  in  the 
socialistic  argument.  That  argument  is  not  that  value  is 
constituted  by  labour  pure  and  simple,  but  by  labour  modified 
by  certain  general  conditions  of  society;  only  it  holds  that 
these  conditions — conditions  of  productivity,  of  rarity,  of 
demand — have  been  created  by  nobody  in  particular,  that, 
therefore,  nobody  in  particular  should  profit  by  them,  and 
that  so  far  as  the  problem  of  the  distribution  of  value  goes, 
the  one  factor  in  the  constitution  of  value  which  needs  to 
be  taken  into  account  in  settling  that  problem,  is  labour. 
All  value  comes  from  labour,  represents  so  much  time  of 
labour,  is,  in  fact,  so  much  "  labour-jeUy,"  so  much  preserved 
labour. 


Ferdinand  Lassalle,  121 

While  one  accepted  economic  law  thus  declares  that  all 
value  is  conferred  by  the  labourer,  and  is  simply  his  sweat, 
brain,  and  sinew  incorporated  in  the  product,  another  econo- 
mic law  declares  that  he  gains  no  advantage  from  the  pro- 
ductivity of  his  own  work,  and  that  whatever  value  he 
produces,  he  earns  only  the  same  wages — bare  customary 
subsistence.  In  that  lies  the  alleged  injustice  of  the  present 
system.  Yon  Thuenen,  the  famous  Feudalist  landowner  and 
economic  experimentalist,  said,  many  years  ago,  that  when  the 
modem  working  class  once  began  to  ask  the  question.  What 
is  natural  wages?  a  revolution  might  arise  which  would  reduce 
Europe  to  barbarism.  This  is  the  question  Lassalle  asked, 
and  by  which  mainly  he  stirred  up  socialism.  The  effect  of 
the  previous  argument  was  to  raise  the  question,  What  is  the 
labourer  entitled  to  get?  and  to  suggest  the  answer,  he  is 
entitled  to  get  everything.  The  next  question  is.  What,  then, 
does  the  labourer  actually  get  ?  and  the  answer  is,  that  on  the 
economists'  own  showing,  he  gets  just  enough  to  keep  soul 
and  body  together,  and  on  the  present  system  can  never 
get  any  more.  Ricardo,  in  common  with  other  economists, 
had  taught  that  the  value  of  labour,  like  the  value  of  every- 
thing else,  was  determined  by  the  cost  of  its  production,  and 
that  the  cost  of  the  production  of  labour  meant  the  cost  of 
the  labourer's  subsistence  according  to  the  standard  of  living 
customary  among  his  class  at  the  time.  Wages  might  rise  for 
a  season  above  this  level,  or  fall  for  a  season  below  it,  but  they 
always  tended  to  return  to  it  again,  and  would  not  permanently 
settle  anywhere  else.  When  they  rose  higher,  the  labouring 
class  were  encouraged  by  their  increased  prosperity  to  marry,  and 
eventually  their  numbers  were  thus  multiplied  to  such  a  degree 
that  by  the  force  of  ordinary  competition  the  rate  of  wages  was 
brought  down  again;  when  they  fell  lower, marriages  diminished 
and  mortality  increased  among  the  working  class,  and  the  result 
was  such  a  reduction  of  their  numbers  as  to  raise  the  rate  of 
wages  again  to  its  old  level.  This  is  the  economic  law  of 
natural  or  necessary  wages — "  the  iron  and  cruel  law  "  which 
Lassalle  declared  absolutely  precluded  the  wage-labourers — e.e., 
96  per  cent,  of  the  population — from  all  possibility  of  ever 
improving  their  condition  or  benefiting  in  the  least  from  the 


122  Co7itemporary  Socialism. 

growing  productivity  of  their  own  work.  This  law  converted 
industrial  freedom  into  an  aggravated  slavery.  The  labourer 
was  unmanned,  taken  out  of  a  relationship  which,  with  all 
its  faults,  was  still  a  human  and  personal  one,  put  under  an 
impersonal  and  remorseless  economic  law,  sent  like  a  com- 
modity to  be  bought  in  the  cheapest  market,  and  there  dis- 
possessed by  main  force  of  competition  of  the  value  of  the 
property  which  his  own  hands  had  made.  Das  Eigenthum  ist 
Fremdthum  geicorden. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  teaching  like  this  should  move  the 
minds  of  working  men  to  an  intolerable  sense  of  despair  and 
wrong.  Nor  was  there  any  possibility  of  hope  except  in  a 
revolution.  For  the  injustice  complained  of  lay  in  the  essence 
of  the  existing  economic  system,  and  could  not  be  removed, 
except  with  the  complete  abolition  of  the  system.  The  only 
solution  of  the  question,  therefore,  was  a  socialistic  recon- 
struction which  should  make  the  instruments  of  production 
collective  property,  and  subordinate  capital  to  labour,  but  such 
a  solution  would  of  course  be  the  work  of  generations,  and 
meanwhile,  the  easiest  method  of  transition  from  the  old  order 
of  things  to  the  new,  lay  in  establishing  productive  associations 
of  working  men  on  State  credit.  These  would  form  the  living 
seed-corn  of  the  new  era.  This  was  just  Louis  Blanc's  scheme, 
with  two  differences — viz.,  that  the  associations  were  to  be 
formed  gradually,  and  that  they  were  to  be  formed  voluntarily. 
The  State  was  not  asked  to  introduce  a  new  organization  of 
labour  by  force  all  at  once,  but  merely  to  lend  capital  at 
interest  to  one  sound  and  likely  association  after  another,  as 
they  successively  claimed  its  aid.  This  loan  was  not  to  be 
gratuitous,  as  the  French  socialists  used  to  demand  in  1848, 
and  since  there  would  be  eventually  only  one  association  of 
the  same  trade  in  each  town,  and  since,  besides,  they  would 
also  establish  a  system  of  mutual  assurance  against  loss,  trade 
by  trade,  the  State,  it  was  urged,  would  really  incm-  no  risk. 
Lassalle,  speaking  of  State  help,  said  he  did  not  want  a  hand 
from  the  State,  but  only  a  little  finger,  and  he  actually  sought, 
in  the  first  instance  at  least,  no  more  than  Mr.  Gladstone  gave 
in  the  Irish  Land  Act.  The  scheme  was  mainly  urged,  of 
course,  in  the  interests  of  a  sounder  distribution  of  wealth ;  but 


Ferdinand  Lassalle.  123 

Lassalle  contended  that  it  would  also  increase  production ;  and 
it  is  important  to  remember  that  he  says  it  would  not  other- 
wise be  economically  justifiable,  because  "  an  increase  of 
production  is  an  indispensable  condition  of  every  improvement 
of  our  social  state,"  This  increase  would  be  effected  by  a 
saving  of  cost,  in  abolishing  local  competition,  doing  away 
with  middle-men  and  private  capitalists,  and  adapting  produc- 
tion better  to  needs.  The  business  books  of  the  association 
would  form  the  basis  of  a  sound  and  trustworthy  s^'stem  of 
commercial  statistics,  so  much  required  for  the  purpose  of 
avoiding  over-production.  The  change  would,  he  thought, 
also  introduce  favourable  alterations  in  consumption,  and  in 
the  direction  of  production ;  inasmuch  as  the  taste  of  the 
working  class  for  the  substantial  and  the  beautiful,  would 
more  and  more  supplant  the  taste  of  the  bourgeoisie  for  the 
cheap  and  nasty. 

After  the  death  of  Lassalle,  the  movement  he  began  departed 
somewhat  from  the  lines  on  which  he  launched  it.  1st,  His 
plan  of  replacing  capitalistic  industry  by  productive  associa- 
tions of  labourers,  founded  on  State  credit,  had  always  seemed 
a  mockery,  or,  at  least,  a  makeshift,  to  many  of  the  socialists 
of  Germany.  It  would  not  -destroy  competition,  for  one 
association  would  still  of  necessity  compete  with  another  ;  and 
it  would  not  secure  to  every  man  the  right  to  the  full  product 
of  his  labour,  for  the  members  of  the  stronger  productive 
associations  would  be  able  to  exploit  the  members  of  the 
weaker  as  the  ordinary  result  of  their  inter-competition.  In 
other  words,  Lassalle's  plan  would  not  in  their  eyes  realize  the 
socialist  claim,  as  that  claim  had  been  taught  to  them  by 
Marx.  Their  claim  could  only  be  realized  by  the  conversion  of 
all  industrial  instruments  into  public  property,  and  the  system- 
atic conduct  of  all  industry  by  the  public  authority  ;  and  why 
not  aim  straight  for  that  result,  they  asked,  instead  of  first 
bringing  in  a  merely  transitional  period  of  productive  associa- 
tionSjWhich  would,  on  Lassalle's  own  calculations,  take  two  hun- 
dred years  to  create,  and  which  might  not  prove  transitional  to 
the  socialist  state  after  all  ?  Rodbertus  even  had  gone  against 
Lassalle  on  this  point,  because  he  wanted  to  see  individual 
property  converted  into  national  property,  and  thought  con- 


124  Contemporary  Socialism. 

verting  it  first  into  joint  stock  property  was  really  to  prevent 
rather  than  promote  the  main  end  he  had  in  view. 

Then,  2nd,  Lassalle  was  a  national,  not  an  international 
socialist.  He  held  that  every  country  should  solve  its  own 
social  question  for  itself,  and  that  the  working-class  movement 
was  not,  and  should  not  be  made,  cosmopolitan.  He  was 
even — as  Prince  Bismarck  said  in  Parliament,  when  taxed  with 
having  personal  relations  with  him — patriotic.  At  least  he 
was  an  intense  believer  in  Prussia ;  less,  however,  because  he 
was  a  Prussian  than  because  Prussia  was  a  strong  State,  and 
because  he  thought  that  strong  States  alone  could  do  the 
world's  work  in  Germany  or  elsewhere.  By  nationality  in 
itself  he  set  but  little  store  ;  a  nationality  had  a  right  to 
separate  existence  if  it  could  assert  it,  but  if  it  were  weak 
and  struggling,  its  only  duty  was  to  submit  with  thankfulness 
to  annexation  by  a  stronger  power.  He  wished  his  followers, 
therefore,  to  keep  aloof  from  the  doings  of  other  nations,  and 
to  concentrate  their  whole  exertions  upon  victory  at  the 
elections  in  their  own  country  and  the  gradual  development 
of  productive  associations  on  national  loans.  This  restriction 
of  the  range  of  the  movement  had  from  the  first  dissatisfied 
some  of  its  adherents,  especially  a  certain  active  section  who 
hated  Prussia  as  much  as  Lassalle  believed  in  her,  and  after 
the  influence  of  the  International  began  to  make  itself  felt 
upon  the  agitation  in  Germany,  this  difference  of  opinion 
gathered  gradually  to  a  head.  In  1868  a  motion  was  brought 
before  the  general  meeting  of  the  League  in  favour  of  estab- 
lishing relations  with  the  International  and  accepting  its 
programme.  The  chief  promoters  of  this  motion  were  the  two 
present  leaders  of  the  Social  Democratic  party  in  the  Reichs- 
tag, Liebknecht  and  Bebel,  and  it  was  strongly  opposed  by 
the  president  of  the  League,  Dr.  von  Schweitzer,  an  advocate  in 
Frankfort,  and  a  strong  champion  of  Prussia,  who  was  elected 
to  the  presidency  in  1866,  just  at  the  time  tlie  extension  of  the 
suffrage  gave  a  fresh  impetus  to  the  movement,  and  whose 
energy  and  gifts  of  management  contributed  greatly  to  the 
development  of  the  organization.  The  motion  was  carried  by 
a  substantial  majority,  but  before  next  year  Von  Schweitzer 
had  succeeded  in  turning  the  tables  on  his  opponents,  and  at 


Ferdinand  Las sa lie.  125 

the  general  meeting  in  1869,  Liebknecht  and  Bebel  were 
expelled  from  the  League,  as  traitors  to  the  labourers'  cause. 
After  their  expulsion  they  called  together  in  the  same  year  a 
congress  of  working  men  at  Eisenach,  which  was  attended 
mainly  by  delegates  from  Austria  and  South  Germany,  and 
founded  an  independent  organization  on  the  principles  of  the 
International,  and  under  the  name  of  the  Social  Democratic 
Labour  Party  of  Germany.  The  two  organizations  existed 
side  by  side  till  1874,  when  a  union  was  effected  between  them 
at  a  general  meeting  at  Gotha,  and  they  became  henceforth 
the  Socialist  Labour  Party.  This  was  the  burial  of  the 
national  socialism  of  Lassalle,  for  though  in  deference  to  his 
followers,  the  new  programme  promised  in  the  meantime  to 
work  within  national  limits,  it  expressly  recognised  that  the 
labourers'  movement  was  international,  and  that  the  great  aim 
to  be  striven  after  was  a  state  of  society  in  which  every  man 
should  be  obliged  to  share  in  the  general  labour  according  to 
his  powers,  and  have  a  right  to  receive  from  the  aggregate 
product  of  labour  according  to  what  was  termed  his  rational 
requirements.  Some  "  orthodox  Lassalleans,"  as  they  called 
themselves,  held  aloof  from  this  compromise,  but  they  are  too 
few  to  be  of  any  importance.  They  still  remain  apart  from 
the  main  body  of  German  socialism,  and  Hve  in  such  good 
odour  with  the  Government,  whether  on  account  of  their 
unimportance  or  of  their  supposed  loyalty,  that  thej^  were  never 
molested  by  any  application  of  the  Socialist  Laws  which  were 
enforced  for  twelve  years  strenuously  against  all  other  socialists. 
Among  the  causes  which  brought  the  others  to  so  much 
unanimity  was  undoubtedly  the  establishment  of  the  German 
Empire  in  1871,  which  was  \'iewed  with  universal  aversion 
by  socialists  of  every  shade.  On  the  outbreak  of  the  war, 
Schweitzer  and  the  members  of  the  original  League  gave  their 
sympathies  warmly  to  the  arms  of  their  country,  and  the 
Social  Democratic  party  was  nearly  equally  divided  on  the 
subject ;  but  after  the  foundation  of  the  French  Republic, 
they  all  with  one  consent  declared  that  the  war  ought  now  to 
cease,  and  the  socialist  deputies,  no  matter  which  organi^iation 
they  belonged  to,  voted  without  exception  against  granting 
supplies  for  its  continuance.     The}'-  were  hkewise  opposed  to 


126.  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  recognition  of  the  title  of  Emperor  and  to  the  constitution 
of  the  Empire,  and  indeed  as  republicans  they  could  not  be 
anything  else.  From  a  recollection  mainly  of  these  votes 
Prince  Bismarck  considered  the  movement  to  be  unpatriotic 
and  hostUe  to  the  Empire,  and  accordingly  suppressed  its  pro- 
paganda in  1878,  when  its  growth  seemed  likely  to  prove  a 
serious  danger  to  an  Empire  whose  stability  was  still  far  from 
being  assured  by  any  experience  of  its  advantages.  The 
socialists  retorted  upon  this  policy  at  their  congress  at  Wyden, 
Switzerland,  in  1880,  by  striking  out  of  their  programme  the 
limitation  of  proceeding  by  legal  means,  on  the  ground  that 
the  action  of  the  Government  having  made  legal  means 
impracticable,  no  resource  was  left  but  to  meet  force  by  force. 
They  thus  threw  aside  the  last  shred  of  the  practical  policy  of 
Lassalle,  and  stood  out  thenceforth  as  a  party  of  internationsd 
revolution. 

The  movement  could,  however,  hardly  help  becoming  inter- 
national ;  not,  as  some  allege,  because  this  is  a  peculiarity  of 
revolutionary  parties  ;  on  the  contrary,  other  parties  may  also 
exhibit  it.  What,  for  example,  was  the  Holy  Alliance  but  an 
international  league  of  the  monarchical  and  aristocratic  parties 
against  the  advance  of  popular  rights  ?  Nor  is  it  a  peculiarity 
of  the  present  time  only.  No  doubt  the  increased  inter- 
communication and  inter-dependence  between  countries  now 
facihtates  its  development.  There  are  no  longer  nations  in 
Europe,  said  Heine,  but  only  parties.  But  in  reality  it  has 
always  been  nearly  as  much  so  as  now.  Any  party  founded 
on  a  definite  general  principle  or  interest  may  in  any  age 
become  international,  and  even  what  may  seem  unpatriotic. 
The  Protestants  of  France  in  the  16th  century  sought  help 
from  England,  and  the  Jacobites  of  England  in  the  18th 
sought  help  from  France ;  just  as  the  German  socialists  of 
1870  sided  with  the  French  after  Sedan,  and  the  French 
communists  of  1871  preferred  to  see  their  country  occupied 
by  the  Germans  rather  than  governed  by  the  "  Versaillais." 
In  all  these  cases  the  party  principles  were  naturally  inter- 
national, and  the  party  bias  overcame  the  patriotic. 

Besides,  the  socialist  is,  almost  by  necessity  of  his  position 
and  principles,  predisposed  to  discourage  and  condemn  patriot- 


Ferdinand  Las  sal le.  127 

ism.  Others,  indeed,  condemn  it  as  well  as  he.  Most  of  the 
great  writers  who  revived  German  literature  towards  the 
beginning  of  this  century — Lessing,  Herder,  Wieland,  Goethe 
— have  all  disparaged  it.  They  looked  on  it  as  a  narrow  and 
obsolete  virtue,  useful  enough  perhaps  in  rude  times,  but  a 
hindrance  to  rational  progress  now;  the  modern  virtue  was 
humanity,  the  idea  of  which  had  just  freshly  burst  upon  their 
age  like  a  new  power.  This  consideration  may  no  doubt  to 
some  extent  weigh  with  socialists  also,  for  their  whole  thinking 
is  leavened  with  the  notion  of  humanity,  but  their  most 
immediate  objection  to  patriotism  is  one  of  a  practical  nature. 
Their  complaint  used  always  to  be  that  the  proletarian  had 
no  country,  because  he  was  excluded  from  political  rights.  He 
was  not  a  citizen,  and  why  should  he  have  the  feelings  of 
one?  But  now  he  has  got  political  rights,  and  they  still 
complain.  He  is  in  the  country,  they  say,  but  not  yet  of  it. 
He  is  practically  excluded  from  its  civilization,  from  all  that 
makes  the  country  worth  living  or  fighting  for.  He  has  no 
country,  for  he  is  denied  a  man's  share  in  the  lite  that  is 
going  in  any.     Edmund  Ludlow  wrote  over  his  door  in  exile  — 

"  Every  land  is  my  fatherland, 
For  all  lands  are  my  Father's." 

The  modern  socialist  says,  No  land  is  my  fatherland,  for  in 
none  am  I  a  son.  He  believes  himself  to  be  equally  neglected 
in  all,  and  that  is  precisely  the  severest  strain  that  can  try 
the  patriotic  sentiment.  The  proletarian  is  taught  that  in 
every  country  he  is  a  slave,  and  that  patriotism  and  religion 
onlj'"  reconcile  him  to  remaining  so.  Moreover,  as  Eod- 
bertus  has  remarked,  the  social  question  itself  is,  in  a  sense, 
international  because  it  is  social. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

KARL    MARX. 

In  opening  the  present  chapter  in  the  previous  edition  of  this 
book,  I  said  it  was  not  a  little  remarkable  that  the  works  of 
Karl  Marx,  which  had  then  excited  considerable  commotion 
in  other  European  countries,  were  still  absolutely  unknown 
in  England,  though  England  was  the  country  where  they 
were  written,  and  to  whose  circumstances  they  were,  in  their 
author's  judgment,  pre-eminently  applicable.  His  principal 
work,  "Das  Kapital,"  is  a  criticism  of  modern  industrial  develop- 
ment as  explained  by  English  economists  and  exemplified  in 
English  society.  It  shows  a  rare  knowledge  of  English 
economic  literature,  even  of  the  most  obscure  writers  ;  it  goes 
very  fully  into  the  conditions  of  English  labour  as  described 
in  our  parliamentary  reports;  and  out  of  four  hundred  odd 
books  it  quotes,  more  than  three  hundred  are  English  books. 
Its  illustrations  are  drawn  from  English  industrial  life,  and 
its  very  money  allusions  are  stated  in  terms  of  English  coin. 
Its  chief  doctrine,  moreover,  was  an  old  English  doctrine, 
familiar  among  the  disciples  of  Owen  ;  and  to  crown  all,  if  the 
author's  belief  was  true,  England  was  the  country  ripest  for 
its  reception,  for  the  socialist  revolution,  he  thought,  would 
inevitably  come  when  the  working  class  sunk  into  the  condition 
of  a  proletariat,  and  the  working  class  of  England  had  been 
a  proletariat  for  many  years  already.  Yet  Marx's  work 
was  not  at  that  time  (1884)  translated  into  English,  though 
it  had  been  into  most  other  European  languages,  and  had 
enjoyed  a  very  large  sale  even  in  Russia,  to  whose  circum- 
stances it  had  admittedly  very  little  adaptation.  An  English 
translation  appeared  at  length,  however,  in  1887,  twenty  years 
after  the  publication  of  the  original,  and  a  considerable  edition 
was  disposed  of  within  a  year,  though  the  price  was  high.     We 


Karl  Marx.  129 

have  therefore  grown  more  familiar  of  late  with  the  name  and 
importance  of  Karl  Marx. 

Born  at  Treves  in  1818,  the  son  of  a  Christian  Jew  who 
had  a  high  post  in  the  civil  service,  Marx  was  sent  to  the 
University  of  Bonn,  towards  the  end  of  the  '30s,  won  a  con- 
siderable reputation  there  in  philosophy  and  jurisprudence, 
determined,  like  Lassalle,  to  devote  himself  to  the  academic 
profession,  and  seemed  destined  for  an  eminently  successful 
career,  in  which  his  subsequent  marriage  with  the  sister  of  the 
Prussian  Minister  of  State,  Von  Westphalen,  would  certainly 
have  facilitated  his  advancement.  But  at  the  University  he 
came  under  the  spell  of  Hegel,  and  passed,  step  by  step,  with 
the  Extreme  Left  of  the  Hegelian  school,  into  the  philosophical, 
religious,  and  political  Radicalism  which  finally  concentrated 
into  the  Humanism  of  Feuerbach.  Just  as  he  had  finished  his 
curriculum,  the  accession  of  Frederick  William  IV.  in  1840 
stirred  a  rustle  of  most  misplaced  expectation  among  the 
Liberals  of  Germany,  who  thought  the  day  of  freedom  was  at 
length  to  break,  and  who  rose  with  generous  eagerness  to  the 
tasks  to  which  it  was  to  summon  them.  Under  the  influence 
of  these  hopes  and  feelings,  Marx  abandoned  the  professorial 
for  an  editorial  life,  and  committed  himself  at  the  very  outset 
of  his  days  to  a  political  position  which  compromised  him 
hopelessly  with  German  governments,  and  forced  him,  step 
by  step,  into  a  long  career  of  revolutionary  agitation  and 
organization.  He  joined  the  staff  of  the  Rhenish  Gazette^  which 
was  founded  at  that  time  in  Cologne  by  the  leading  Liberals 
of  the  Rhine  country,  including  Camphausen  and  Hansemann, 
and  which  was  the  organ  of  the  Young  Hegelian,  or  Philo- 
sophical Radical  Party,  and  he  made  so  great  an  impression 
by  his  bold  and  vigorous  criticism  of  the  proceedings  of  the 
Rhenish  Landtag  that  he  was  appointed  editor  of  the  news- 
paper in  1842.  Li  this  post  he  continued  his  attacks  on  the 
Government,  and  they  were  at  once  so  effective  and  so  carefully 
worded  that  a  special  censor  was  sent  from  Berlin  to  Cologne 
to  take  supervision  of  his  articles,  and  when  this  agency 
proved  ineffectual,  the  journal  was  suppressed  by  order  of  the 
Prussian  Ministry  in  1843.  From  Cologne  Marx  went  to 
Paris  to  be  a  joint  editor  of  the  Deutsche  Franzosische  Jahr- 

K 


130  Contemporary  Socialism. 

hiicher  with  Arnold  Ruge,  a  leader  of  the  Hegelian  Extreme 
Left,  who  had  been  deprived  of  his  professorship  at  the 
University  of  Halle  by  the  Prussian  Government,  and  whose 
magazine,  the  Deutsche  Jahrbiicher,  pablished  latterly  at 
Leipzig  to  escape  the  Prussian  authority,  had  just  been 
suppressed  by  the  Saxon.  The  Deutsche  Franzosische  Jahr- 
biicher  were  published  by  the  well-known  Julius  Froebel, 
who  had  some  time  before  given  up  his  professorship  at 
Zurich  to  edit  a  democratic  newspaper,  and  open  a  shop 
for  the  sale  of  democratic  literature ;  who  professed  himself  a 
communist  in  Switzerland,  and  had  written  some  able  works, 
with  very  radical  and  socialistic  leanings,  but  who  seems  to 
have  gone  on  a  different  tack  at  the  time  of  the  Lassallean 
movement,  for  he  was — as  Meding  shows  us  in  his  "  Memoiren 
zur  Zeitgeschichte " — the  prime  promoter  of  the  ill-fated 
Congress  of  Princes  at  Frankfort  in  1865.  The  new  magazine 
was  intended  to  be  a  continuation  of  the  suppressed  Deutsche 
Jahi'bucher^  on  a  more  extended  plan,  embracing  French  as 
well  as  German  contributors,  and  supplying  in  some  sort  a 
means  of  uniting  the  Extreme  Left  of  both  nations ;  but  no 
French  contribution  ever  appeared  in  it,  and  it  ceased  alto- 
gether in  a  year's  time,  probably  for  commercial  reasons, 
though  there  is  no  unlikelihood  in  the  allegation  sometimes 
made,  that  it  was  stopped  in  consequence  of  a  difference 
between  the  editors  as  to  the  treatment  of  the  question  of 
communism. 

The  Young  Hegelians  had  already  begun  to  take  the 
keenest  interest  in  that  question,  but  were,  for  a  time, 
curiously  perplexed  as  to  the  attitude  they  should  assume 
towards  it.  They  seem  to  have  been  fascinated  and  repelled 
by  turns  by  the  system,  and  to  have  been  equally  unable  to 
cast  it  aside  or  to  commit  themselves  fairly  to  it.  Karl 
Griin,  himself  a  Young  Hegelian,  says  that  at  first  they  feared 
socialism,  and  points,  for  striking  evidence  of  this,  to  the  fact 
that  the  Rhenish  Gazette  bestowed  an  enthusiastic  welcome  on 
Stein's  book  on  French  communism,  although  that  book  con- 
demned the  system  from  a  theologically  orthodox  and  politically 
reactionary  point  of  view.  But  he  adds  that  the  Young 
Hegelians  contributed  to  the  spread  of  socialism  against  their 


Karl  Marx.  131 

will,  that  it  was  througli  the  interest  they  took  in  its  specula- 
tions and  experiments  that  socialism  acquired  credit  and 
support  in  public  opinion  in  Germany,  and  that  the  earliest 
traces  of  avowed  socialism  are  to  be  found  in  the  Rhenish 
Gazette.  If  we  may  judge  by  the  extracts  from  some  of  Marx's 
articles  in  that  journal  which  are  given  in  Bruno  Bauer's 
"  Vollstandige  Geschichte  der  Parthei-Kampfe  in  Deutschland 
wahrend  der  Jahre  1842-46,"  we  should  say  that  Marx  was 
even  at  this  early  period  a  decided  socialist,  for  he  often 
complains  of  the  great  wrong  "  the  poor  dumb  millions  "  suffer 
in  being  excluded  by  their  poverty  from  the  possibility  of  a 
free  development  of  their  powers,  "  and  from  any  participation 
in  the.  fruits  of  civilization,"  and  maintains  that  the  State  had 
far  other  duty  towards  them  than  to  come  in  contact  with 
them  only  througli  the  police.  When  Ruge  visited  Cabet  in 
Paris,  he  said  that  he  and  his  friends  (meaning,  he  explained, 
the  philosophical  and  political  opposition)  stood  so  far  aloof 
from  the  question  of  communism  that  they  had  never  yet 
so  much  as  raised  it,  and  that,  while  there  were  communists 
in  Germany,  there  was  no  communistic  party.  This  state- 
ment is  probably  equivalent  to  saying  that  he  and  his  school 
took  as  yet  a  purely  theoretical  and  Platonic  interest  in  socialism, 
and  had  not  come  to  adopt  it  as  part  of  their  practical  pro- 
gramme. Most  of  them  were  already  communists  by  con- 
viction, and  the  others  felt  their  general  philosophical  and 
political  principles  forcing  them  towards  communism,  and  the 
reason  of  their  hesitation  in  accepting  it  is  probably  expressed 
by  Ruge,  when  he  says  (in  an  article  in  Heinzen's  "  Die 
Opposition,"  p.  103),  that  the  element  of  truth  in  communism 
was  its  sense  of  the  necessity  of  political  emancipation,  but 
that  there  was  a  great  danger  of  communists  forgetting  the 
political  question  in  their  zeal  for  the  social.  It  was  chiefly 
under  the  influence  of  the  Humanism  into  which  Feuerbach 
had  transformed  the  Idealism  of  Hegel,  that  the  Hegelian 
Left  passed  into  communism.  Humanist  and  communist 
became  nearly  convertible  terms.  Friedrich  Engels  mentions 
in  his  book  on  the  condition  of  the  English  working  classes, 
published  in  1845,  that  all  the  German  communists  of  that 
day  were  followers  of  Feuerbach,  and  most  of  the  followers 


132  Contemporary  Socialism. 

of  Feuerbach  in  Germany  (Ruge  seems  to  have  remained  an 
exception)  were  communists.  Lassalle  was  one  of  Feuerbach's 
correspondents,  and  after  he  started  the  present  socialist  move- 
ment in  Germany,  he  wrote  Feuerbach  on  21st  October, 
1863,  saying  that  the  Progressists  were  political  rationalists 
of  the  feeblest  type,  and  that  it  was  the  same  battle  which 
Feuerbach  was  waging  in  the  theological,  and  he  himself  now 
in  the  political  and  economic  sphere.  Stein  attributed  French 
socialism  greatly  to  the  prevailing  sensualistic  character  of 
French  philosophy,  which  conceived  enjoyment  to  be  man's 
only  good,  and  never  rose  to  what  he  calls  the  great  German 
conception,  the  logical  conception  of  the  Ego,  the  idea  of 
knowing  for  the  sake  of  knowing.  The  inference  this  con- 
trast suggests  is  that  the  metaphysics  of  Germany  had  been 
her  protector,  her  national  guard,  against  socialism,  but  as 
we  see,  at  the  very  time  he  was  writing  the  guard  was  turning 
traitor,  and  a  native  socialism  was  springing  up  by  natural 
generation  out  of  the  idealistic  philosophy.  The  fact,  how- 
ever, rather  confirms  the  force  of  Stein's  remark,  for  the 
Hegelian  idealism  first  bred  the  more  sensualistic  system  of 
humanism,  and  then  humanism  bred  socialism. 

Hegel  had  transformed  the  transcendental  world  of  current 
opinion,  with  its  personal  Deity  and  personal  immortality,  into 
a  world  of  reason;  and  Feuerbach  went  a  step  further,  and 
abolished  what  he  counted  the  transcendency  of  reason  itself. 
Heaven  and  God,  he  entirely  admitted,  were  nothing  but 
subjective  illusions,  fantastic  projections  of  man's  own  being 
and  his  own  real  world  into  external  spheres.  But  mind,  an 
abstract  entity,  and  reason,  a  universal  and  single  principle, 
were,  in  his  opinion,  illusions  too.  There  was  nothing  real 
but  man — the  concrete  flesh  and  blood  man  who  thinks  and 
feels.  "  God,"  says  Feuerbach,  speaking  of  his  mental  develop- 
ment, "  was  my  first  thought.  Reason  my  second,  Man  my 
third  and  last."  He  passed,  as  Lange  points  out,  through 
Comte's  three  epochs.  Theology  was  swept  away,  and  then 
metaphysics,  and  in  its  room  came  a  positive  and  materialistic 
anthropology  which  declared  that  the  senses  were  the  sole 
sources  of  real  knowledge,  that  the  body  was  not  only  part  of 
man's  being,  but  its  totality  and  essence,  and,  in  short,  that  man 


Karl  Marx.  133 

is  wliat  he  eats — Der  Menach  ist  was  er  isst.  Man,  therefore, 
had  no  other  God  before  man,  and  the  promotion  of  man's 
happiness  and  culture  in  this  earthly  life — which  was  his  only 
life — was  the  sole  natural  object  of  his  political  or  religious 
interest.  This  system  was  popularized  by  Feuerbach's  brother 
Friedrich,  in  a  little  work  called  the  "  Religion  of  the  Future," 
which  enjoyed  a  high  authority  among  the  German  com- 
munists, and  formed  a  kind  of  lectionary  they  read  and  com- 
mented on  at  their  stated  meetings.  The  object  of  the  new 
religion  is  thus  described  in  it: — "Man  alone  is  our  God,  our 
father,  our  judge,  our  redeemer,  our  true  home,  our  law  and 
rule,  the  alpha  and  omega  of  our  political,  moral,  public,  and 
domestic  life  and  work.  There  is  no  salvation  but  by  man." 
And  the  cardinal  articles  of  the  faith  are  that  human  nature 
is  holy,  that  the  impulse  to  pleasure  is  holy,  that  everything 
which  gratifies  it  is  holy,  that  every  man  is  destined  and 
entitled  to  be  happy,  and  for  the  attainment  of  this  end  has  the 
right  to  claim  the  greatest  possible  assistance  from  others,  and 
tlio  duty  to  afford  the  same  to  them  in  turn. 

Now  the  tendency  of  this  metaphysical  and  moral  teaching 
was  strongly  democratic  and  socialistic.  There  was  said  to  be 
in  the  existing  political  system  a  false  transcendency  identical 
with  that  of  the  current  religious  system.  King  and  council 
hovered  high  and  away  above  the  real  life  of  society  in  a  world 
of  their  own,  looking  on  political  power  as  a  kind  of  private 
property,  and  careless  of  mankind,  from  whom  it  sprang,  to 
whom  it  belonged,  and  by  whom  and  for  whom  it  should  be 
administered.  "  The  princes  are  gods,"  says  Feuerbach,  "  and 
they  must  share  the  same  fate.  The  dissolution  of  theology 
into  anthropology  in  the  field  of  thought  is  the  dissolution  of 
monarchy  into  republic  in  the  field  of  politics.  Dualism,  sepa- 
ration is  the  essence  of  theology ;  dualism,  separation  is  the 
essence  of  monarchy.  There  we  have  the  antithesis  of  God 
and  world  ;  here  we  have  the  antithesis  of  State  and  people." 
This  dualism  must  be  abolished.  The  State  must  be  humanized 
— must  be  made  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  all  for  the  wel- 
fare of  all ;  and  its  inhabitants  must  be  politized,  for  they,  all 
of  them,  constitute  the  ijolis.  Man  must  no  longer  be  a  means, 
but  must  be  everywhere  and  always  an  end.     There  was  no- 


134  Contemporary  Socialism. 

body  above  man  ;  there  was  neither  superhuman  person,  nor 
consecrated  person ;  neither  deity,  nor  divine  right.  And,  on 
the  other  hand,  as  there  is  no  person  who  in  being  or  right  is 
more  than  man,  so  there  must  be  no  person  who  is  less.  There 
must  be  no  unmenschen,  no  slaves,  no  heretics,  no  outcasts,  no 
outlaws,  but  every  being  who  wears  human  flesh  must  be 
placed  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  full  rights  and  privileges  of 
man.     The  will  of  man  be  done,  hallowed  be  his  name. 

These  principles  already  bring  us  to  the  threshold  of  social- 
ism, and  now  Feuerbach's  peculiar  ethical  principle  carries  us 
into  its  courts.  That  principle  has  been  well  termed  Tuism, 
to  distinguish  it  from  Egoism.  The  human  unit  is  not  the 
individual,  but  man  in  converse  with  man,  the  sensual  Ego 
with  the  sensual  Tu.  The  isolated  man  is  incomplete,  both  as 
a  moral  and  as  a  thinking  being.  "  The  nature  of  man  is  con- 
tained only  in  the  community,  in  the  unity  of  man  with  man. 
Isolation  is  finitude  and  limitation,  community  is  freedom  and 
infinity.  Man  by  himself  is  but  man ;  man  with  man,  the 
unity  of  I  and  Thou,  is  God."  Feuerbach  personally  never 
became  a  communist,  for  he  says  his  principle  was  neither 
egoism  nor  communism,  but  the  combination  of  both.  They 
were  equally  true,  for  they  were  inseparable,  and  to  condemn 
self-love  would  be,  he  declared,  to  condemn  love  to  others  at 
the  same  time,  for  love  to  others  was  nothing  but  a  recogni- 
tion that  their  self-love  was  justifiable.  But  it  is  easy  to  per- 
ceive the  natural  tendency  of  the  teaching  that  the  social  man 
was  the  true  human  unit  and  essence,  and  was  to  the  indi- 
vidual as  a  God.  With  most  of  his  disciples  Humanism  meant 
making  the  individual  disappear  in  the  community,  making 
egoism  disappear  in  love,  and  making  private  property  dis- 
appear in  collective.  Hess  flatly  declared  that  "  the  species 
was  the  end,  and  the  individuals  were  only  means."  Euge 
disputed  this  doctrine,  and  contended  that  the  empirical  indi- 
vidual was  the  true  human  unit  and  the  true  end  ;  but  even  he 
said  that  socialism  was  the  humanism  of  common  life.  Griin 
passes  into  socialism  by  simply  applying  to  property  Feuer- 
bach's method  of  dealing  with  theology  and  monarchy.  He 
argues  that  if  the  true  essence  of  man  is  the  social  man,  then, 
just  as  theology  is  anthropology,  so  is  anthropology  socialism, 


Karl  Marx.  135 

for  property  is  at  present  entirely  alienated,  externalized  from 
the  social  man.  There  is  a  false  transcendency  in  it,  like  that 
of  divinity  and  monarchy.  "  Deal,  therefore,"  he  says,  "  with 
the  practical  God,  money,  as  Feuerbach  dealt  with  the  theo- 
retical " ;  humanize  it.  Make  property  an  inalienable  posses- 
sion of  manhood,  of  every  man  as  man.  For  property  is  a 
necessary  material  for  his  social  activity,  and  therefore  ought 
to  belong  as  inalienably  and  essentially  to  him  as  everj^thing 
which  he  otherwise  possesses  of  means  or  materials  for  his 
activity  in  life  ;  as  inalienably,  for  example,  as  his  body  or  his 
personal  acquirements.  If  man  is  the  social  man,  some  social 
possession  is  then  necessary  to  his  manhood,  and  might  be 
called  an  essential  part  of  it ;  but  existing  property  is  some- 
thing outside,  as  separate  from  him  as  heaven  or  the  sovereign 
power.  Griin  accordingly  says  that  Feuerbach's  "  Essence  of 
Christianity "  supplies  the  theoretical  basis  for  Proudhon's 
social  system,  because  the  latter  only  applies  to  practical  life 
the  principles  which  the  former  applied  to  religion  and  meta- 
physics, but  he  admits  that  neither  Feuerbach  nor  Proudhon 
would  acknowledge  the  connection. 

We  thus  see  how  theoretical  humanism — a  philosophy  and 
a  religion — led  easily  over  into  the  two  important  articles  of 
practical  humanism,  a  democratic  transformation  of  the  State 
and  a  communistic  transformation  of  society.  This  was  the 
ideal  of  the  humanists,  and  it  contains  ample  and  wide-reach- 
ing positive  features  ;  but  when  it  came  to  practical  action  they 
preferred  for  the  present  to  take  up  an  attitude  of  simple  but 
implacable  negation  to  the  existing  order  of  things.  No  doubt 
variety  of  opinion  existed  among  them  ;  but  if  they  are  to  be 
judged  by  what  seemed  their  dominant  interest,  they  were 
revolutionaries  and  nothing  else.  They  repudiated  with  one 
consent  the  socialist  Utopias  of  France,  and  refrained  on  prin- 
ciple from  committing  themselves  to,  or  even  discussing,  any 
positive  scheme  of  reconstruction  whatsoever.  They  held  it 
premature  to  think  of  positive  proposals,  which  would,  more- 
over, be  sure  to  sow  divisions  among  themselves.  Their  first 
great  business  was  not  to  buQd  up,  but  to  destroy,  and  their 
work  in  the  meantime  was  therefore  to  develop  the  revolu- 
tionary spirit  to  its  utmost  possible  energy,  by  exciting  hatred 


136  Contetnporary  Socialism. 

against  all  existing  institutions;  in  short,  to  create  an  immense 
reservoir  of  revolutionary  energy  which  might  be  turned  to 
account  when  its  opportunity  arrived.  Their  position  is  singu- 
larly like  the  phase  of  Russian  nihilism  described  by  Baron 
Fircks,  and  presented  to  us  in  TurgeniefFs  novels.  It  is  ex- 
pressed very  plainly  by  W.  Marr,  himself  an  active  humanist, 
who  carried  Feuerbach's  "  Essence  of  Christianity  "  as  his  con- 
stant companion,  and  founded  a  secret  society  for  promoting 
humanistic  views.  In  his  interesting  book  on  Secret  Societies 
in  Switzerland,  he  says,  "  The  masses  can  only  be  gathered 
under  the  flag  of  negation.  When  you  present  detailed  plans, 
you  excite  controversies  and  sow  divisions  ;  you  repeat  the 
mistake  of  the  French  socialists,  who  have  scattered  their 
redoubtable  forces  because  they  tried  to  carry  formulated 
systems.  We  are  content  to  lay  down  the  foundation  of  the 
revolution.  We  shall  have  deserved  well  of  it  if  we  stir  hatred 
and  contempt  against  all  existing  institutions.  We  make  war 
against  all  prevailing  ideas,  of  religion,  of  the  State,  of  country.^ 
of  patriotism.  The  idea  of  God  is  the  keystone  of  a  perverted 
civilization.  It  must  be  destroyed.  The  true  root  of  liberty, 
of  equality,  of  culture,  is  Atheism.  Nothing  must  restrain  the 
spontaneity  of  the  human  mind."  All  this  work  of  annihila- 
tion could  neither  be  done  by  reform,  nor  by  conspiracy,  but 
only  by  revolution,  and  "  a  revolution  is  never  made  ;  it  makes 
itself."  While  the  revolution  was  making,  Marr  founded  an 
association  in  Switzerland,  "  Young  Germany,"  which  should 
prepare  society  for  taking  effective  action  when  the  hour  came. 
There  was  a  "  Young  Germany "  in  Switzerland  when  he 
arrived  there;  part  of  a  federation  of  secret  societies  established 
by  Mazzini  in  1834,  under  the  general  name  of  "Young 
Europe,"  and  comprising  three  series  of  societies  : — "  Young 
Italy,"  composed  of  Itahans;  "Young  Poland,"  of  Poles;  and 
"  Young  Germany,"  of  Germans,  But  this  organization  was 
not  at  all  to  Marr's  mind,  because  it  concerned  itself  with 
nothing  but  politics,  and  because  its  method  was  conspiracy. 
"  Great  transformations,"  he  said,  "are  never  prepared  by  con- 
spiracies," and  it  was  a  very  great  transformation  indeed  that 
he  contemplated.  He  therefore  formed  a  "  Young  Germany  " 
of  his  own.     His  plan  was  to  plant  a  lodge,  or  "  family,"  wher- 


Karl  Marx.  137 

ever  there  existed  a  German  working  men's  association.  The 
members  of  this  family  became  members  of  the  association, 
and  formed  a  leaven  which  influenced  all  around  them,  and, 
through  the  wandering  habits  of  the  German  working  class, 
was  carried  to  much  wider  circles.  The  family  met  for  poli- 
tical discussion  once  a  week,  read  Friedrich  Feuerbach  to- 
gether on  the  Sundays  with  fresh  recruits,  who,  when  they 
had  mastered  him,  were  said  to  have  put  off  the  old  man  ;  and 
their  very  password  was  humanity^  a  brother  being  recognised 
by  using  the  half-word  human — .2  interrogatively,  and  the  other 
replying  by  the  remaining  half — itcit.  The  members  were  all 
ardent  democrats,  but,  as  a  rule,  so  national  in  their  sj^m- 
pathies  that  the  leaders  made  it  one  great  object  of  their  disci- 
plina  arcani  to  stifle  the  sentiment  of  patriotism  by  subjecting 
it  to  constant  ridicule. 

Their  relations  to  communism  are  not  quite  easy  to  deter- 
mine, Marr  himself  sometimes  expresses  disapproval  of  the 
system.  He  says,  "  Communism  is  the  expression  of  impotence 
of  will.  The  communists  lack  confidence  in  themselves.  They 
suffer  under  social  oppression,  and  look  around  for  consolation 
instead  of  seeking  for  weapons  to  emancipate  themselves  with. 
It  is  only  a  world-weariness  desiring  illusion  as  the  condition 
of  its  life,"  He  says  the  belief  in  the  absolute  dependence  of 
man  on  matter  is  the  shortest  and  most  pregnant  definition  of 
communism,  and  that  it  starts  from  the  principle  that  man  is 
a  slave  and  incapable  of  emancipating  himself.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  complains  that  the  members  of "  Young  Ger- 
many" did  not  sufficiently  appreciate  the  social  question,  being 
disgusted  with  the  fanaticism  of  the  communists.  By  the 
communists,  he  here  means  the  followers  of  "Weitling  and 
Albrecht,  who  were  at  that  time  creating  a  party  movement 
in  Switzerland.  The  prophet  Albrecht,  as  he  is  called,  was 
simply  a  crazy  mystic  with  proclivities  to  sedition  which 
brought  him  at  length  to  prison  for  six  years,  and  which  took 
there  an  eschatological  turn  from  his  having,  it  is  said,  nothing 
to  read  but  the  Bible,  so  that  on  his  release  he  went  about  pro- 
phesying that  Jehovah  had  prepared  a  way  in  the  desert, 
which  was  Switzerland,  for  bringing  into  Europe  a  reign  of 
peace,  in  which  people  should  hold  all  things  in  common  and 


138  Contemporary  Socialism. 

enjoy  complete  sensuous  happiness,  sitting  under  their  common 
vine  and  fig-tree,  with  neither  king  nor  priest  to  make  them 
any  more  afraid.  Weitling  was  not  quite  so  unimportant,  but 
the  attention  he  excited  at  the  time  is  certainly  not  justified 
by  any  of  the  writings  he  has  left  us.  He  was  a  tailor  from 
Magdeburg,  who  was  above  his  work,  beUeving  himself  to  be  a 
poet  and  a  man  of  letters,  condemned  by  hard  fate  and  iniqui- 
tous social  arrangements  to  a  dull  and  cruel  lot.  Having 
gone  to  Paris  when  socialism  was  the  rage  there,  he  eagerly 
embraced  that  new  gospel,  and  went  to  Switzerland  to  carry- 
its  message  of  hope  to  his  own  German  countrymen.  There 
he  forsook  the  needle  altogether,  and  lived  as  the  paid  apostle 
of  the  dignity  of  manual  labour,  for  which  he  had  himself  little 
mind.  His  ideas  are  crude,  confused,  and  arbitrary.  His  ideal 
of  society  was  a  community  of  labourers,  with  no  State,  no 
Church,  no  individual  property,  no  distinction  of  rank  or  posi- 
tion, no  nationality,  no  fatherland.  All  were  to  have  equal 
rights  and  duties,  and  each  was  to  be  put  in  a  position  to 
develop  his  capacity  and  gratify  his  bents  as  far  as  possible. 
He  was  moved  more  by  the  desire  for  abstract  equality  than 
German  socialists  of  the  humanist  or  contemporaiy  type,  for 
they  do  not  build  on  the  justice  of  a  more  equal  distribution  of 
wealth  so  much  as  on  the  necessity  of  the  possession  of  pro- 
perty for  the  free  development  of  the  human  personality.  He 
is  entirely  German,  however,  in  his  idea  of  the  government  of 
the  new  society.  It  was  to  be  governed  by  the  three  greatest 
philosophers  of  the  age,  assisted  by  a  board  of  trade,  a  board  of 
health,  and  a  board  of  education.  In  Switzerland  he  founded, 
to  promote  his  views,  a  secret  society,  the  "  Alliance  of  the 
Just,"  which  had  branches  in  most  of  the  Swiss  towns.  Its 
members  were  chiefly  Germans  from  Germany,  for  very  few 
'of  the  communists  in  Switzerland  were  born  Swiss,  and 
according  to  Marr,  who  was  present  at  some  of  their  meetings, 
they  were  three-fourths  of  them  tailors.  "  I  felt,"  says  Marr, 
"  when  I  entered  one  of  these  clubs,  that  I  was  with  the 
mother  of  tailors.  The  tailor  sitting  and  chatting  at  his  work 
is  always  extreme  in  his  opinions.  Tailor  and  communist  are 
synonymous  terms."  It  was  to  some  of  the  leaders  of  this 
alliance  that  "Weitling  unfolded  his  wild  scheme  of  a  proleta- 


Karl  Marx.  139 

riat  raid,  according  to  which  an  army  of  20,000  brigands  was 
to  be  raised  among  the  proletariat  of  the  large  towns,  to  go 
with  torch  and  sword  into  all  the  countries  of  Europe,  and 
terrify  the  bourgeoisie  into  a  recognition  of  universal  commu- 
nity of  goods.  It  is  only  fair  to  add  that  his  proposal  met 
with  no  favour.  Letters  were  found  in  his  possession,  and 
subsequently  published  in  Bluutschli's  official  report,  which 
show  that  some  of  Weitling's  correspondents  regarded  his 
scheme  with  horror,  and  others  treated  it  with  ridicule.  One 
of  them  said  it  was  trying  to  found  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
with  the  furies  of  hell.  The  relations  between  "  Young  Ger- 
many "  and  "Weitling's  allies  were  apparently  not  cordial, 
though  they  had  so  much  in  common  that,  on  the  one  hand, 
Weitling's  correspondents  urge  him  to  keep  on  good  terms 
with  "  Young  Germany,"  and,  on  the  other,  Marr  says  he 
actually  tried  to  get  a  common  standing  ground  with  the 
communists,  and  thought  he  had  found  it  in  the  negation  of 
the  present  system  of  things — the  negation  of  religion,  the 
negation  of  patriotism,  the  negation  of  subjection  to  authority. 
Now  the  importance  of  this  excursus  on  the  Y^oung  Hegelians 
hes  in  the  fact  that  Karl  Marx  was  a  humanist,  and  looked  on 
humanism  as  the  vital  and  creative  principle  in  the  renovation 
of  poHtical  and  industrial  society.  In  the  Deutsche  Franzos- 
ische  Jahrhiicher  he  published  an  article  on  the  Hegelian 
Philosophy  of  Right,  in  which  he  sa5's  :  "  The  new  revolution 
will  be  introduced  by  philosophy.  The  revolutionary  tradition 
of  Germany  is  theoretical.  The  Reformation  was  the  work  of 
a  monk ;  the  Revolution  will  be  the  work  of  a  philosopher." 
The  particular  philosophy  that  was  to  do  the  work  is  that  of 
the  German  critics,  whose  critique  of  religion  had  ended  in  the 
dogma  that  man  is  the  highest  being  for  man,  and  in  the 
categorical  imperative,  "  to  destroy  everything  in  the  present 
order  of  things  that  makes  a  man  a  degraded,  insulted,  for- 
saken, and  despised  being."  But  philosophy  cannot  work  a 
revolution  without  material  weapons ;  and  it  will  find  its 
material  weapon  in  the  proletariat,  which  he  owns,  however, 
was  at  the  time  he  wrote  only  beginning  to  be  formed  in 
Germany.  But  when  it  rises  in-  its  strength,  it  will  be  irre- 
sistible, and  the  revolution  which  it  will  accomplish  will  be  the 


140  Co7itemporary  Socialism. 

only  one  known  to  history  that  is  not  Utopian.  Other  revolu- 
tions have  been  partial,  wrought  by  a  class  in  the  interests  of  a 
class  ;  but  this  one  will  be  a  universal  and  uniform  revolution, 
effected  in  the  name  of  all  society,  for  the  proletariat  is  a 
class  which  possesses  a  universal  character  because  it  dissolves 
all  other  separate  classes  into  itself.  It  is  the  only  class  that 
takes  its  stand  on  a  human  and  not  a  historical  title.  Its 
very  sorrows  and  grievances  have  nothing  special  or  relative 
in  them;  they  are  the  broad  sorrows  and  grievances  of 
humanity.  And  its  claims  are  like  them ;  for  it  asks  no 
special  privileges  or  special  prerogatives ;  it  asks  nothing  but 
what  all  the  world  will  share  along  with  it.  The  history  of 
the  world  is  the  judgment  of  the  world,  and  the  duration  of  an 
order  of  things  founded  on  the  ascendancy  of  a  limited  class 
possessing  money  and  culture,  is  practically  condemned  and 
foredoomed  by  the  rapid  multiplication  of  a  large  class  outside 
which  possess  neither.  The  growth  of  this  latter  body  not 
merely  tends  to  produce,  but  actually  is,  the  dissolution  of  the 
existing  system  of  things.  For  the  existing  S3'stem  is  founded 
on  the  assertion  of  private  property,  but  the  proletariat  is 
forced  by  society  to  take  the  opposite  principle  of  the  negalion 
of  private  property  for  the  principle  of  its  own  life,  and  will 
naturally  carry  that  principle  into  all  society  when  it  gains 
the  power,  as  it  is  rapidly  and  inevitably  doing.  Marx 
sums  up :  "  The  only  practical  emancipation  for  Germany  is 
an  emancipation  proceeding  from  the  standpoint  of  the  theory 
which  explains  man  to  be  the  highest  being  for  man.  In 
Germany  the  emancipation  from  the  middle  ages  is  only 
possible  as  at  the  same  time  an  emancipation  from  the  partial 
conquests  of  the  middle  ages.  In  Germany  one  kind  of  bond 
cannot  be  broken  without  all  other  bonds  being  broken  too. 
Germany  is  by  nature  too  thorough  to  be  able  to  revolutionize 
without  revolutionizing  from  a  fundamental  principle,  and 
following  that  principle  to  its  utmost  limits ;  and  therefore  the 
emancipation  of  Germany  will  be  the  emancipation  of  man. 
The  head  of  this  emancipation  is  philosophy  ;  its  heart  is  the 
proletariat."  He  adds  that  when  things  are  ripe,  "  when  all 
the  inner  conditions  have  been  completed,  the  German  resur- 
rection day  will  be  heralded  by  the  crowing  of  the  Gallic  cock." 


Karl  Marx.  141 

In  this  essay  we  mark  already  Marx's  overmastering  belief 
in  natural  historical  evolution,  which  he  had  learnt  from 
Hegel,  and  which  prevented  him  from  having  any  sympathy 
with  the  Utopian  projects  of  the  French  socialists.  They 
vainly  imagined,  he  held,  that  they  could  create  a  new  world 
right  off,  whereas  it  was  only  possible  to  do  so  by  observing  a 
rigorous  conformity  to  the  laws  of  the  development  already  in 
progress,  by  making  use  of  the  forces  already  at  work,  and 
proceeding  in  the  direction  towards  which  the  stream  of  things 
was  itself  slowly  but  mightily  moving.  Hegel  sought  the 
principle  of  organic  development  in  the  State,  but  Marx 
sought  it  rather  in  civil  society,  and  believed  he  had  discovered 
it  in  that  most  mighty  though  unconscious  product  of  the 
large  system  of  industry,  the  modem  proletariat,  which  was 
bom  to  revolution  as  the  sparks  fly  upward ;  and  in  the 
simultaneous  decline  of  the  middle  classes,  that  is,  of  the  con- 
servative element  which  could  resist  the  change.  The  process 
which  was,  as  he  held,  now  converting  society  into  an  aggre- 
gate of  beggars  and  millionaires  was  bound  eventually  to 
overleap  itself  and  land  in  a  communism.  I  shall  not  discuss 
the  truth  of  this  conception  at  present,  but  it  contributes,  along 
with  the  sentiments  of  justice  and  humanity  that  animate — 
rightly  or  wrongly — the  ideal  of  the  socialists,  to  lend  some- 
thing of  a  religious  force  to  their  movement,  for  they  feel  that 
they  are  fellow-workers  with  the  nature  of  things. 

We  left  Marx  in  Paris,  and  on  returning  to  him,  we  find 
him  engaged — as  indeed  we  usually  do  when  his  history  comes 
into  notice — in  a  threefold  warfare.  Besides  his  general  war 
against  the  arrangements  of  modern  society,  he  is  always 
carrying  on  a  bitter  and  implacable  war  against  the  Prussian 
Government,  and  is  often  engaged  in  controversy — sometimes 
very  personal — with  foes  of  his  own  philosophical  or  revolu- 
tionary household.  After  the  cessation  of  the  Deutsche  Franzos- 
ische  Jahrbiicher,  Marx  edited  a  paper  called  VorwdrtSj  and  in 
this  and  other  journals  open  to  him,  he  attacked  the  Prussian 
administration  so  strongly  that  that  administration  complained 
to  Guizot,  who  gave  him  orders  to  quit  France.  His  more 
personal  controversy  at  this  time  arose  out  of  one  of  the 
schisms    of    the   Young   Hegelians,    and    he   and    his   friend 


142  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Friedrich  Engels  wrote  a  pamphlet — "  Die  Heilige  Familie  " — 
against  the  Hegelian  Idealism,  and  especially  against  Bruno 
Bauer,  who  had  offended  him — says  Erdmann,  in  his  "  History 
of  Philosophy  " — at  once  as  Jew,  as  Radical,  and  as  journalist. 
When  expelled  from  France,  he  went  to  Brussels,  where  he 
was  allowed  to  continue  his  war  upon  the  Prussian  Govern- 
ment without  interference,  till  the  revolution  of  1848.  During 
this  period  he  devoted  his  attention  more  particularly  than 
hitherto  to  commercial  subjects,  and  published  in  1846  his 
"  Discours  sur  le  Libre-echange,"  and  in  1847  his  "  Misere  de 
la  Philosophie,"  a  reply  to  Proudhon's  "  Philosophic  de  la 
Misere  " — both  in  French. 

While  in  Brussels,  Marx  received  an  invitation  from  the 
London  Central  Committee  of  the  Communist  League  to  join 
that  society.  This  league  had  been  founded  in  Paris  in  1836, 
for  the  purpose  of  propagating  communist  opinions  among  the 
working  men  of  Germany.  Its  organization  was  analogous  to 
that  of  the  International  and  other  societies  of  the  same  kind. 
A  certain  number  of  members  constituted  a  Gemeinde^  the 
several  Gemeinden  in  the  same  town  constituted  a  Kreis,  a 
number  of  Kreise  were  grouped  into  a  leading  Kreis,  and  at 
the  head  of  the  whole  was  the  Central  Committee,  which  was 
chosen  at  a  general  congress  of  deputies  from  all  the  Kreise, 
and  which  had  since  1840  had  its  seat  in  London.  The  method 
of  the  league  was  to  establish,  as  a  sphere  of  operation,  German 
working  men's  improvement  associations  everywhere.  The 
travelling  custom  of  German  working  men  greatly  facilitated 
this  work,  and  numbers  of  these  associations  were  soon  founded 
in  Switzerland,  England,  Belgium,  and  the  United  States. 
The  reason  its  committee  applied  to  Marx  was  that  he  had  just 
pubhshed  a  series  of  pamphlets  in  Brussels,  in  which,  as  he 
tells  us,  he  "  submitted  to  a  merciless  criticism  the  medley 
of  French-English  socialism  and  communism  and  of  German 
philosophy,  which  then  constituted  the  secret  doctrine  of  the 
League,"  and  insisted  that  "  their  work  could  have  no  tenable 
theoretical  basis  except  that  of  a  scientific  insight  into  the 
economic  structure  of  society,  and  that  this  ought  to  be  put 
into  a  popular  form,  not  with  the  view  of  carrying  out  any 
Utopian  system,  but  of  promoting  among  the  working  classes 


Karl  Marx.  143 

and  other  classes  a  self-conscious  participation  in  the  process 
of  historical  transformation  of  society  that  was  taking  place 
under  their  eyes."  This  is  always  with  Marx  the  distinctive 
and  ruling  feature  of  his  system.  The  French  schemes  were 
impracticable  utopias,  because  they  ignored  the  laws  of  history 
and  the  real  structure  of  economic  society  ;  and  he  claims 
that  his  own  proposals  are  not  only  practicable  but  inevitable, 
because  they  strictly  observe  the  line  of  the  actual  industrial 
evolution,  and  are  thus,  at  worst,  plans  for  accelerating  the  day 
after  to-morrow.  But,  besides  this  difference  of  principle, 
Marx  thought  the  League  should  also  change  its  method  and 
tactics.  Its  work,  being  that  of  social  revolution,  was  different 
from  the  work  of  the  old  political  conspirators  and  secret  socie- 
ties, and  therefore  needed  different  weapons  ;  the  times,  too, 
were  changed,  and  offered  new  instruments.  Street  insurrec- 
tions, surprises,  intrigues,  pronunciamentos  might  overturn  a 
dynasty,  or  oust  a  government,  or  bring  them  to  reason,  but  were 
of  no  avail  in  the  world  for  introducing  collective  property  or 
aboUshing  wage  labour.  People  would  just  begin  again  the  day 
after  to  work  for  hire  and  rent  their  farms  as  they  did  before. 
A  social  revolution  needed  other  and  larger  preparation  ;  it 
needed  to  have  the  whole  population  first  thoroughly  leavened 
with  its  principles  ;  nay,  it  needed  to  possess  an  international 
character,  depending  not  on  detached  local  outbreaks,  but  on 
steady  concert  in  revolutionary  action  on  the  part  of  the 
labouring  classes  everywhere.  The  cause  was  not  political,  or 
even  national,  but  social ;  and  society — which  was  indeed 
already  pregnant  with  the  change — must  be  aroused  to  a  con- 
scious consent  to  the  delivery.  What  was  first  to  be  done, 
therefore,  was  to  educate  and  move  public  opinion,  and  in  this 
work  the  ordinary  secret  society  went  but  a  little  way,  A 
secret  propaganda  might  still  be  carried  on,  but  a  pubhc  and 
open  propaganda  was  more  effectual  and  more  suitable  to  the 
times.  There  never  existed  greater  facilities  for  such  a  move- 
ment, and  they  ought  to  make  use  of  all  the  abundant  means 
of  popular  agitation  and  intercommunication  which  modern 
society  allowed.  No  more  secret  societies  in  holes  and  corners, 
no  more  small  risings  and  petty  plots,  but  a  great  broad 
organization  working  in  open  day,  and  working  restlessly  by 


144  Contemporary  Socialism. 

tongue  and  pen  to  stir  the  masses  of  all  European  countries 
to  a  common  international  revolution.  Marx  souglit,  in  short, 
to  introduce  the  large  system  of  production  into  the  art  of 
conspiracy. 

Finding  his  views  well  received  by  the  Central  Committee  of 
the  Communist  League,  he  acceded  to  their  request  to  attend 
their  General  Congress  at  London  in  1847,  and  then,  after 
several  weeks  of  keen  discussion,  he  prevailed  upon  the  Con- 
gress to  adopt  "  the  Manifesto  of  the  Communist  party,"  which 
was  composed  by  himself  and  Engels,  and  which  was  afterwards 
translated  from  the  German  into  English,  French,  Danish, 
and  Italian,  and  sown  broadcast  everywhere  just  before  the 
Revolution  of  1848.  This  Communist  League  may  be  said  to 
be  the  first  organization — and  this  Communist  Manifesto  the 
first  public  declaration — of  the  International  Socialist  Demo- 
cracy that  now  is.  The  Manifesto  begins  by  describing  the 
revolutionary  situation  into  which  the  course  of  industrial 
development  has  brought  modern  society.  Classes  were  dying 
out ;  the  yeomanry,  the  nobility,  the  small  tradesmen,  would 
soon  be  no  more ;  and  society  was  drawn  up  in  two  widely 
separated  hostile  camps,  the  large  capitalist  class  or  bourgeoisie^ 
who  had  all  the  property  and  power  in  the  country,  and  the 
labouring  class,  the  proletariat,  who  had  nothing  of  either.  The 
bourgeoisie  had  played  a  most  revolutionary  part  in  history. 
Thej''  had  overturned  feudalism,  and  now  they  had  created  pro- 
letarianism,  which  would  soon  swamp  themselves.  They  had 
collected  the  masses  in  great  towns ;  they  had  kept  the  course  of 
industry  in  perpetual  ilux  and  insecurity  by  rapid  successive 
transformations  of  the  instruments  and  processes  of  production, 
and  by  continual  recurrences  of  commercial  crises ;  and  while 
they  had  reduced  all  other  classes  to  a  proletariat,  they  had  made 
the  life  of  the  proletariat  one  of  privation,  of  uncertainty, 
of  discontent,  of  incipient  revolution.  They  exploited  the 
labourer  of  political  power ;  they  exploited  him  of  property, 
for  they  treated  him  as  a  ware,  buying  him  in  the  cheapest 
market  for  the  cost  of  his  production,  that  is  to  say,  the  cost  of 
his  living,  and  taking  from  him  the  whole  surplus  of  his  work, 
after  deducting  the  value  of  his  subsistence.  Under  the 
system  of  wage  labour,   it  could  not   be  otherwise.     Wages 


Kaj'l  Marx.  145 

could  never,  by  economic  laws,  rise  above  subsistence. 
While  wage  labour  created  property,  it  created  it  alwaj's  for 
the  capitalist,  and  never  for  the  labourer ;  and,  in  fact,  the  latter 
only  lived  at  all,  so  far  as  it  was  for  the  interests  of  the 
governing  class,  the  bourgeoisie,  to  permit  him.  Class  rule  and 
wage  labour  must  be  swept  awa}'^,  for  they  were  radically 
unjust,  and  a  new  reign  must  be  inaugurated  which  would  be 
politically  democratic  and  socially  communistic,  and  in  which 
the  free  development  of  each  should  be  the  condition  for  the 
free  development  of  all. 

The  Manifesto  went  on  to  say  that  communism  was  not  the 
subversion  of  existing  principles,  but  their  universalization. 
Communism  did  not  seek  to  abolish  the  State,  but  only  the 
bourgeois  State,  in  which  the  bourgeois  exclusively  hold  and 
wield  political  power.  Communism  did  not  seek  to  abolish 
property,  but  only  the  bourgeois  system  of  property,  under 
which  private  property  is  really  already  abolished  for  nine- 
tenths  of  society,  and  maintained  merely  for  one-tenth.  Com- 
munism did  not  seek  to  abolish  marriage  and  the  family,  but 
only  the  bourgeois  system  of  things  under  which  marriage  and 
the  family,  in  any  true  sense  of  those  terms,  were  virtually 
class  institutions,  for  the  proletariat  could  not  have  any  familj^ 
life  worthy  of  the  name,  so  long  as  their  wages  were  so  low 
that  they  were  forced  to  huddle  up  their  whole  family  regard- 
less of  all  decency,  in  a  single  room,  so  long  as  their  wives  and 
daughters  were  victims  of  the  seduction  of  the  bourgeoisie,  and 
so  long  as  their  children  were  taken  away  prematurely  to 
labour  in  mills  for  bourgeois  manufacturers,  who  yet  held  up 
their  hands  in  horror  at  the  thought  of  any  violation  of  the 
institution  of  the  family.  Communism  did  not  tend  to  abolish 
fatherland  and  nationality — that  was  abolished  already  for  the 
proletariat,  and  was  being  abolished  for  the  bourgeoisie,  too,  by 
the  extensions  of  their  trade. 

As  to  the  way  of  emancipation,  the  proletariat  must  strive 
to  obtain  political  power,  and  use  it  to  deprive  the  bourgeoisie 
of  all  capital  and  means  of  production,  and  to  place  them  in  the 
hands  of  the  State,  i.e.,  of  the  proletariat  itself  organized  as 
a  governing  body.  Now,  for  this,  immediate  and  various 
measures  interfering  with  property,   and  condemned  by  our 

L 


146  Contemporary  Socialism. 

current  economics,  were  requisite.  Those  measures  would 
naturally  be  different  for  different  countries,  but  for  the  most 
advanced  countries  the  following  were  demanded :  (1)  Expro- 
priation of  landed  property  and  application  of  rent  to  State 
expenditure ;  (2)  abolition  of  inheritance ;  (3)  confiscation  of 
the  property  of  all  emigrants  and  rebels  ;  (4)  centralization  of 
credit  in  the  hands  of  the  State  by  means  of  a  national  bank, 
with  State  capital  and  exclusive  monopoly ;  (5)  centralization 
of  all  means  of  transport  in  hands  of  State ;  (6)  institution  of 
national  factories,  and  improvement  of  lands  on  a  common 
plan ;  (7)  compulsory  obligation  of  labour  upon  all  equally,  and 
establishment  of  industrial  armies,  especially  for  agriculture  ; 
(8)  joint  prosecution  of  agriculture  and  mechanical  arts,  and 
gradual  abolition  of  the  distinction  of  town  and  country ;  (9) 
public  and  gratuitous  education  for  all  children,  abolition  of 
children's  labour  in  factories,  etc.  The  Manifesto  ends  by  say- 
ing : — "  The  communists  do  not  saek  to  conceal  their  views 
and  aims.  They  declare  openly  that  their  purpose  can  only 
be  obtained  by  a  violent  overthrow  of  all  existing  arrange- 
ments of  society.  Let  the  ruling  classes  tremble  at  a  com- 
munistic revolution.  The  proletariat  have  nothing  to  lose  in 
t  but  their  chains  ;  they  have  a  world  to  win.  Proletarians  of 
all  countries,  unite !  " 

When  the  French  Revolution  of  February,  1848,  broke  out, 
Marx  was  expelled  without  circumstance  from  Brussels,  and 
received  an  invitation  from  the  Provisional  Government  of 
Paris  to  return  to  France.  He  accepted  this  invitation,  but 
was  only  a  few  weeks  in  Paris  when  the  German  revolution  of 
March  occurred,  and  he  hastened  to  the  theatre  of  affairs. 
With  his  friends,  Freiligrath,  Wolff,  Engels,  and  others,  he 
established  on  June  1st  in  Cologne  the  New  Rhenish  Gazette^ 
which  was  the  soul  of  the  Rhenish  revolutionary  movement,  the 
most  important  one  of  the  year  in  Germany,  and  that  in  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  young  Lassalle  first  emerged  on  the 
troubled  surface  of  revolutionary  politics.  After  the  coup  d'eta t  of 
November,  dissolving  the  Prussian  Parliament,  the  New  Rhen- 
ish Gazette  strongly  urged  the  people  to  stop  paying  their  taxes, 
and  thus  meet  force  by  force.  It  inserted  an  admonition  to 
that  effect  in  a  prominent  place  in  eveiy  successive  number, 


Karl  Marx.  147 

and  Marx  was  twice  tried  for  sedition  on  account  of  this 
admonition,  biit  each  time  acquitted.  The  newspaper,  how- 
ever, was  finally  suppressed  by  civil  authority  after  the 
Dresden  insurrection  of  May,  1849,  its  last  number  appearing 
on  June  19th  in  red  type,  and  containing  Freiligrath's  well- 
known  "  Farewell  of  the  New  Rhenish  Gazette  " — spiritedly 
translated  for  us  by  Ernest  Jones — which  declared  that  the 
journal  went  down  with  "  rebellion "  on  its  lips,  but  would 
reappear  when  the  last  of  the  German  Crowns  was  overturned. 

Farewell,  but  not  for  ever  farewell ! 

They  cannot  kill  the  spirit,  my  brother ; 
In  thunder  I'll  rise  on  the  field  where  I  fell, 

More  boldly  to  fight  out  another. 
"When  the  last  of  Crowns,  like  glass,  shall  break 

On  the  scene  our  sorrows  have  haunted, 
And  the  people  its  last  dread  "  Guilty  "  shall  speak, 

By  your  side  you  shall  find  rae  undaunted. 
On  Rhine  or  on  Danube,  in  war  and  deed. 

You  shall  witness,  true  to  his  vow, 
On  the  wrecks  of  thrones,  in  the  midst  of  the  field, 

The  rebel  who  greets  you  now. 

This  vow  is  no  mere  Parthian  flourish  of  poetical  defiance. 
Freiligrath  and  his  friends  undoubtedly  believed  at  this  time 
that  the  political  movements  of  1848  and  1849  were  but  pre- 
liminary ripples,  and  would  be  presently  succeeded  by  a  great 
flood-wave  of  revolution  which  they  heard  already  sounding 
along  in  their  dangerously  expectant  ear.  His  poem  on  the 
Revolution  remains  as  evidence  to  us  that  in  1860  he  still 
clung  to  that  hope,  and  it  would  not  have  been  out  of  tune 
with  his  sanguine  beliefs  of  the  year  before  if  he  promised, 
not  merely  that  the  spirit  of  the  journal  would  rise  again,  but 
that  its  next  number  would  be  published,  after  the  Deluge. 

Meanwhile  Marx  went  to  London,  where  he  remained  for 
the  rest  of  his  life.  Finding  that  the  revolutionary  spirit  did 
not  revive,  and  that  historical  societies,  which  have  not  lost 
their  moral  and  economic  vitality,  had  a  greater  readjusting 
power  against  political  disturbance  than  he  previously  believed, 
he  gave  up  for  the  next  ten  or  twelve  years  the  active  wort  of 
revolutionizing.  The  Communist  League,  which  had  got 
disorganized  in  the  revolutionary  year,  and  %\-as  rent  in  two  by 


14S  Contemporary  Socialism. 

a  bitter  schism  in  1850,  was,  with  his  concurrence,  dissolved 
in  1852,  on  the  ground  that  its  propaganda  was  no  longer 
opportune  ;  and  the  story  of  the  Brimstone  League,  with  its 
iron  discipline  and  ogrish  desires,  of  which  Mehring  says  Marx 
was,  during  his  London  residence,  the  head-centre,  is  simply  a 
fairy  tale  of  Karl  Vogt's,  whose  baselessness  Marx  has  himself 
completely  exposed.  Before  leaving  the  Communist  League, 
two  circumstances  may  be  mentioned,  because  they  repeat 
themselves  constantly  in  this  revolutionary  history.  The  one 
is  that  this  schism  took  place  not  on  a  point  of  doctrine,  but  of 
opportunity  ;  the  extremer  members  thought  the  conflict  in 
Germany  on  the  Hessian  question  offered  a  good  chance  for  a 
fresh  revolutionary  outbreak,  and  they  left  the  League  because 
their  views  were  not  adopted.  The  other  is  that  in  one  of  its 
last  reports  (quoted  by  Mehring)  the  League  definitely  justifies, 
and  even  recommends,  assassination  and  incendiarism — "  the 
so-called  excesses,  the  inflictions  of  popular  vengeance  on  hated 
individuals,  or  on  public  buildings  which  revive  hateful 
associations."  For  the  next  ten  years  Marx  lived  quietly  in 
London,  writing  for  the  New  York  Tribune  and  other  journals, 
and  studying  modern  industry  on  this  its  "  classical  soil." 
He  read  much  in  the  British  Museum  Library,  gaining  his 
remarkable  acquaintance  with  the  English  economic  writers, 
and  it  was.  probably  in  this  period  he  elaborated  his  famous 
doctrine  of  surplus  value,  with  its  corollary  of  the  right  of 
the  labourer  to  the  full  product  of  his  labour.  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  original  suggestion  of  this  doctrine  came 
from  English  sources,  for  it  was  taught  more  than  a  generation 
before  among  the  English  socialists,  notably  by  AVilliam 
Thompson  in  his  "  Inquiry  into  the  Principles  of  the  Distri- 
bution of  Wealth,"  which  was  published  as  early  as  1824,  and 
is  actually  quoted  by  Marx  in  his  work  on  Capital.  Marx  built 
up  the  doctrine,  however,  into  a  more  systematic  form,  and  it 
is  through  him  and  not  through  the  Owenites  it  has  come  into 
the  present  socialist  movement  in  which  it  plays  so  conspicuous 
a  part.  During  this  period  of  reading  and  rumination, 
Marx  published  a  pamphlet  against  Louis  Napoleon  ;  another 
against  Lord  Palmerston,  which  was  widely  circulated  by 
David  Urquhart ;  a  third  of  a  personal  and  bitter  character 


Karl  Marx.  149 

against  his  fellow-socialist,  Karl  Vogt ;  and  a  more  solid  and 
important  work,  the  "Kritik  der  Politischen  Oekonomie  "  (1859), 
the  firstfruits  of  his  new  economic  studies.  But  a  revolu- 
tionist never  permanently  gives  up  revolutionizing,  and  after 
his  prolonged  abstinence  from  that  excitement,  Marx  returned 
to  it  again  in  1864,  on  the  foundation  of  the  famous  Inter- 
national "Working  Men's  Association. 

The  International  was  simply  the  Communist  League  raised 
again  from  the  dead.  Their  principles  were  the  same ;  their 
constitution  was  the  same ;  and  Marx  began  his  inaugural 
address  to  the  International  in  1864  with  the  very  words  that 
concluded  his  Communistic  Manifesto  of  1847,  "  Proletarians  of 
all  nations,  unite  !  "  When  the  representatives  of  the  English 
working  men  first  suggested  the  formation  of  an  international 
working  men's  association,  in  the  address  they  presented  in  the 
Freemasons'  Tavern  to  the  French  working  men  who  were 
sent  over  at  the  instance  of  Napoleon  HI.  to  the  London  Exhi- 
bition of  1862,  they  certainly  never  dreamt  of  founding  an 
organization  of  revolutionary  socialist  democracy  which  in  a 
few  years  to  come  was  to  wear  a  name-  at  which  the  world 
turned  pale.  Their  address  was  most  moderate  and  sensible. 
They  said  that  some  permanent  medium  of  interchanging 
thoughts  and  observations  between  the  working  men  of  differ- 
ent countries  was  likely  to  throw  light  on  the  economic  secrets 
of  societies,  a-nd  to  help  onwards  the  solution  of  the  great 
labour  problem.  For  they  declared  that  that  solution  had  not 
yet  been  discovered,  and  that  the  socialist  systems  which  had 
hitherto  professed  to  propound  it  were  nothing  but  magnificent 
dreams.  Moreover,  if  the  system  of  competition  were  to  con- 
tinue, then  some  arrangement  of  concord  between  employer 
and  labourer  must  be  devised,  and  in  order  to  assert  the  views  of 
the  labouring  class  effectively  in  that  arrangement,  a  firm  and 
organized  union  must  be  established  among  working  men,  not 
merely  in  each  country,  but  in  all  countries,  for  their  interests, 
both  as  citizens  and  as  labourers,  were  everywhere  identical. 
Those  ideas  would  constitute  the  basis  of  a  very  rational  and 
moderate  programme.  But  when,  in  the  following  year,  after 
a  meeting  in  favour  of  the  Polish  insurrection,  which  was  held 
in  St.  Martin's  Hall  under  the  presidency  of  Professor  Beesly, 


150  Contemporary  Socialism. 

and  at  which  some  of  the  French  delegates  of  1862  were  pre- 
sent, a  committee  was  appointed  to  follow  up  the  suggestion, 
this  committee  asked  Marx  to  prepare  a  programme  and  sta- 
tutes for  the  proposed  association,  and  he  impressed  upon  it  at 
its  birth  the  stamp  of  his  own  revolutionary  socialism.  He  never 
had  a  higher  official  position  in  the  International  than  corre- 
sponding secretary  for  Germany,  for  it  was  determined,  pro- 
bably with  the  view  of  securing  a  better  hold  of  the  great 
English  working  class  and  their  extensive  trade  organizations, 
that  the  president  and  secretary  should  be  English  working 
men,  and  then,  after  a  time,  the  office  of  president  was  abo- 
lished altogether  because  it  had  a  monarchical  savour.  But 
Marx  had  the  ablest,  the  best  informed,  and  probably  the  most 
made-up  mind  in  the  council ;  he  governed  without  reigning  ; 
and,  with  his  faithful  German  following,  he  exercised  an  al- 
most paramount  influence  on  its  action  from  first  to  last,  in 
spite  of  occasional  revolts  and  intrigues  against  an  authority 
which  democratic  jealousy  resented  as  dictatorial,  or — worse 
still — monarchical.  The  statutes  of  the  association,  which  were 
adopted  at  the  Geneva  Congress  of  1866,  declared  that  "  the 
economic  subjection  of  the  labourer  to  the  possessor  of  the 
means  of  labour,  i.e.  of  the  sources  of  life,  is  the  first  cause  of 
his  pohtical,  moral,  and  material  servitude,  and  that  the  econo- 
mic emancipation  of  labour  is  consequently  the  great  aim  to 
which  every  political  movement  ought  to  be  subordinated." 
Now  no  doubt  the  "  economic  emancipation  of  labour  "  meant 
different  things  to  different  sections  of  the  Association's  mem- 
bers. To  the  English  trades  unionists  it  meant  practically 
better  wages ;  to  the  Russian  nihilists  it  meant  the  downfall  of 
the  Czar  and  of  all  central  political  authority,  and  leaving  the 
socialistic  communal  organization  of  their  country  to  manage 
itself  without  interference  from  above ;  to  some  of  the  French 
members  (as  appeared  at  the  Lausanne  Congress  in  1867)  it 
meant  the  nationalization  of  credit  and  all  land  except  that 
held  by  peasaiit  proprietors,  a  class  which  it  was  necessary  to 
maintain  as  a  counterpoise  to  the  State  ;  while,  to  the  German 
socialists,  it  meant  the  abolition  of  wages,  the  nationalization 
of  land  and  the  instruments  of  production,  the  assumption  by 
the  State  of  a  supreme  direction  of  all  trade,  commerce,  finance, 


Karl  Marx.  151 

and  agriculture,  and  the  distribution  by  the  State  of  land,  tools, 
and  materials  to  guilds  and  productive  associations  as  the  actual 
industrial  executive.  There  were  thus  very  difiierent  elements 
in  the  composition  of  the  International,  but  a  modus  vivemli 
was  found  for  some  years  by  nursing  an  ultimate  ideal,  which 
was  desirable,  and  meanwhile  practically  working  for  a  proxi- 
mate and  much  narrower  ideal,  which  was  more  immediately 
feasible  or  necessary.  The  association  could  thus  hold  that 
nothing  could  benefit  the  working  class  but  an  abolition  of 
wages,  and  could  yet,  as  it  sometimes  did,  help  and  encourage 
strikes  which  wanted  only  to  raise  wages.  At  its  Congress  in 
Brussels  in  1868  it  declared  that  a  strike  was  not  a  means  of 
completely  emancipating  the  labourers,  but  was  often  a  neces- 
sity in  the  present  situation  of  labour  and  capital.  Most  of  the 
other  practical  measures  to  which  the  association  addressed 
itself — the  eight  hours  normal  day  of  labour,  gratuitous  educa- 
tion, gratuitous  justice,  universal  suffrage,  abolition  of  standing 
armies,  abolition  of  indirect  taxes,  prohibition  of  children's 
labour.  State  credit  for  productive  associations — contemplated 
modifications  of  the  existing  system  of  things,  but  always  con- 
templated them  as  aids  to  and  instalments  of  the  coming 
transformation  of  that  system.  The  consciousness  was  con- 
stantly preserved  that  a  revolution  was  impending,  and  that, 
as  Lassalle  said,  it  was  bound  to  come  and  could  not  be  checked, 
whether  it  approached  by  sober  advances  from  concession  to 
concession,  or  flew,  with  streaming  hair  and  shod  with  steel, 
right  into  the  central  stronghold. 

This  was  very  much  the  keynote  struck  by  Marx  in  his 
inaugural  address.  That  address  was  simply  a  review  of  the 
situation  since  1848,  and  an  encouragement  of  his  forces  to  a 
renewal  of  the  combat.  Wealth  had  enormously  increased  in 
the  interval ;  colonies  had  been  opened,  new  inventions  dis- 
covered, free  trade  introduced ;  but  misery  was  not  a  whit  the 
less ;  class  contrasts  were  even  deeper  marked,  property  was 
more  than  ever  in  the  hands  of  the  few ;  in  England  the  num- 
ber of  landowners  had  diminished  eleven  per  cent,  in  the  pre- 
ceding tenj'ears;  and  if  this  rate  were  to  continue,  the  country 
would  be  rapidly  ripe  for  revolution.  While  the  old  order  of 
things  was  thus  hastening  to  its  doom,  the  new  order  of  things 


152  Contemporary  Socialism. 

had  made  some  advances.  The  Ten  Hours  Act  was  "  not  merely 
a  great  practical  result,  but  was  the  victory  of  a  principle.  For 
the  first  time  the  political  economy  of  the  boiii'geoisie  had  been 
in  clear  broad  day  put  in  subjection  to  the  political  economy  of 
the  working  class,"  Then,  again,  the  experiment  of  co-opera- 
tion had  now  been  sufficiently  tried  to  show  that  it  was  possible 
to  carry  on  industry  without  the  intervention  of  an  employing 
class,  and  had  spread  abroad  the  hope  that  wage  labour  was, 
like  slavery  and  feudal  servitude,  only  a  transitory  and  subor- 
dinate form,  which  was  destined  to  be  superseded  by  associated 
labour.  The  International  had  for  its  aim  to  promote  this 
associated  labour  ;  only  it  sought  to  do  so,  not  piecemeal  and 
sporadically,  but  systematically,  on  a  national  scale,  and  by 
State  means.  And  for  this  end  the  labouring  class  must  first 
acquire  political  power,  so  as  to  obtain  possession  of  the  means 
of  production ;  and  to  acquire  political  power,  they  must  unite. 
The  International,  though,  as  we  have  seen,  possessing  no 
real  solidarity  in  its  composition,  held  together  till  the  out- 
break of  the  Franco-German  war,  and  of  the  revolution  of  the 
Paris  Commune.  It  was,  of  course,  strongly  opposed  to  the 
war,  as  it  was  to  all  war ;  and  strongly  in  favour  of  the  revolu- 
tion, as  it  was  of  all  revolution.  Its  precise  complicity  in  the 
work  of  the  Commune  is  not  easy  to  determine,  but  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  its  importance  has  been  greatly  exaggerated, 
both  by  the  fears  of  his  enemies  and  the  vanity  of  its  members. 
Some  of  the  latter  were  certainly  among  those  who  sat  in  the 
Hotel  de  Ville,  but  none  of  them  were  leading  minds  there ; 
and,  as  for  the  Association  itself,  it  never  had  a  real  member- 
ship, or  ramifications,  of  any  formidable  extent.  For  example, 
the  English  trades  unions  were  in  connection  with  it,  and  their 
members  might  be,  in  a  sense,  counted  among  its  members, 
but  it  is  certain  they  never  recognised  it  as  an  authority  over 
them,  and  they  probably  subscribed  to  it  mainly  as  to  a  useful 
auxiliary  in  a  strike.  The  leaders  of  the  International,  how- 
ever, were,  undoubtedly,  heart  and  soul  with  the  Commune, 
and  approved  probably  both  of  its  aims  and  methods,  and 
Marx,  at  the  Congress  of  the  International,  at  the  Hague,  in 
1872,  drew  from  its  failure  the  lesson  that  "  revolution  must 
be  solidary  "  in  order  to  succeed.     A  revolution  in  one  capital 


Karl  Marx.  153 

of  Europe  must  be  supported  by  simultaneous  revolutions  in  tbe 
rest.  But,  while  there  is  little  ground  for  the  common  belief 
that  the  International  had  any  important  influence  in  creating 
the  insurrection  of  the  Commune,  it  is  certain  that  the  insurrec- 
tion of  the  Commune  killed  the  International.  The  English 
members  dropped  off  from  it  and  never  returned,  and  at  its 
first  Congress  after  the  revolution  (the  Hague,  1872),  the  Associ- 
ation itself  was  rent  by  a  fatal  schism  arising  from  differences 
of  opinion  on  a  question  as  to  the  government  of  the  society  of 
the  future,  which  would  probably  not  have  become  a  subject 
of  such  keen  present  interest  at  the  time  but  for  the  Paris 
Commune.  The  question  concerned  the  maintenance  or  aboli- 
tion of  the  State,  of  the  supreme  central  political  authority, 
and  the  discussion  brought  to  light  that  the  socialists  of  the 
International  were  divided  into  two  distinct  and  irreconcilable 
camps — the  Centralist  Democratic  Socialists,  headed  by  Marx, 
and  the  Anarchist  Socialists,  headed  by  Michael  Bakunin,  the 
Russian  revolutionist.  The  Marxists  insisted  that  the  socialist 
regime  of  collective  property  and  systematic  co-operative  pro- 
duction could  not  possibly  be  introduced,  maintained,  or  regu- 
lated, except  by  means  of  an  omnipotent  and  centralized  poli- 
tical authority — call  it  the  State,  call  it  the  collectivity,  call  it 
what  you  like — which  should  have  the  final  disposal  of  everj'-- 
thing.  The  Bakunists  held  that  this  was  just  bringing  back 
the  old  tyranny  and  slavery  in  a  more  excessive  and  intolerable 
form.  They  took  up  the  tradition  of  Proudhon,  who  said  that 
"  the  true  form  of  the  State  is  anarchy,"  meaning  by  anarchy, 
of  course,  not  positive  disorder,  but  the  absence  of  any  supreme 
ruler,  whether  king  or  convention.  They  would  have  property 
possessed  and  industry  pursued  on  a  communistic  principle  by 
groups  or  associations  of  workmen,  but  these  groups  must  form 
themselves  freely  and  voluntarily,  without  any  social  or  politi- 
cal compulsion.  The  Marxists  declared  that  this  was  simply 
a  retention  of  the  system  of  free  competition  in  an  aggravated 
form,  that  it  would  only  lead  to  confusion  worse  confounded, 
and  that  the  Bakunists,  even  in  trying  to  abolish  the  evils  of 
laissez-faire,  were  stUl  foolishly  supposing  that  the  world  could 
go  of  itself.  This  division  of  opinion — really  a  broader  one 
than  that  which  parts  socialist  from  orthodox  economist — rent 


154  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  already  enfeebled  International  into  two  separate  organiza- 
tions, which  languished  for  a  year  or  two  and  passed  away. 
And  so,  with  high  thoughts  of  spreading  a  reign  of  fraternity 
over  the  earth,  the  International  "Working  Men's  Association 
perished,  because,  being  only  human,  it  could  not  maintain 
fraternity  in  its  own  narrow  borders.  This  is  a  history  that 
repeats  itself  again  and  again  in  socialist  movements.  As  W. 
Marr  said  in  the  remark  quoted  above,  revolutionists  will  only 
unite  on  a  negation ;  the  moment  they  begin  to  ask  what  they 
will  put  in  its  place  they  differ  and  dispute  and  come  to  nought. 
Apprehend  them,  close  their  meetings,  banish  their  leaders, 
and  you  but  knit  them  by  common  suffering  to  common  re- 
sistance. You  supply  them  with  a  negation  of  engrossing 
interest,  you  preoccupy  their  minds  with  a  negative  programme 
which  keeps  them  united,  and  so  you  prevent  them  from  rais- 
ing the  fatal  question — What  next  ?  which  they  never  discuss 
without  breaking  up  into  rival  sects  and  factions,  fraternal 
often  in  nothing  but  their  hatred.  "  It  is  the  shades  that  hate 
one  another,  not  the  colours."  Such  disruptions  and  secessions 
may — as  they  did  in  Germany — by  emulation  increase  for  a 
time  the  efficiency  of  the  organization  as  a  propagandist 
agency,  but  they  certainly  diminish  its  danger  as  a  possible  in- 
strument of  insurrection.  A  socialist  organization  seems  always 
to  contain  two  elements  of  internal  disintegration.  One  is  the 
prevalence  of  a  singular  and  almost  pathetic  mistrust  of  their 
leaders,  and  of  one  another.  The  law  of  suspects  is  always  in 
force  among  themselves.  At  meetings  of  the  German  Social- 
ists, Liebknecht  denounces  Schweitzer  as  an  agent  of  the 
Prussian  Government,  Schweitzer  accuses  Liebknecht  of  being 
an  Austrian,  spy,  and  the  frequent  hints  at  bribery,  and  open 
charges  of  treason  against  the  labourers'  cause,  disclose  to  us 
now  duller  and  now  more  acute  phases  of  that  unhappy  state 
of  mutual  suspicion,  in  which  the  one  supreme,  superhuman 
virtue,  worthy  to  be  worshipped,  if  haply  it  could  anywhere 
be  discovered,  is  the  virtue  men  honoured  oven  in  Robespierre 
— the  incorruptible.  The  other  source  of  disintegration  is 
the  tendency  to  intestine  divisions  on  points  of  doctrine.  A 
reconstruction  of  society  is  necessarily  a  most  extensive 
programme,  and  allows  room  for  the  utmost  variety  of  opinion 


Karl  Marx.  155 

and  plan.  The  longer  it  is  discussed,  the  more  certainly  do 
differences  arise,  and  the  movement  becomes  a  strife  of  schools 
in  no  way  formidable  to  the  government.  All  this  only  fur- 
nishes another  reason  for  the  conclusion  that  in  dealing  with 
socialist  agitations,  a  government's  safest  as  well  as  justest 
policy  is,  as  much  as  may  be,  to  leave  them  alone.  Their 
danger  lies  in  the  cloudiness  of  their  ideas,  and  that  can  only 
be  dispersed  in  the  free  breezes  of  popular  discussion.  The 
sword  is  an  idle  method  of  reasoning  with  an  idea  ;  an  idea  will 
eventually  yield  to  nothing  but  argument.  Repression,  too,  is 
absolutely  impossible  with  modern  facilities  of  inter-coramu- 
nication,  and  can  at  best  but  drive  the  offensive  elements  for 
a  time  into  subterranean  channels,  where  they  gather  like  a 
dangerous  choke-damp  that  may  occasion  at  any  moment  a 
serious  explosion. 

After  the  fall  of  the  International,  Marx  took  no  further 
part  in  public  movements,  but  occupied  his  time  in  completing 
his  work  Daji  Capital^  under  frequent  interruption  from  ill- 
health,  and  he  died  in  Paris  in  the  spring  of  1883,  leaving  that 
w^ork  still  unfinished. 

The  Das  Capital  of  Marx  may  be  said  to  be  the  sacred  book 
of  contemporary  socialism,  and  though,  like  other  sacred 
books,  it  is  probably  a  sealed  one  to  the  body  of  the  faithful, 
for  it  is  extremely  stiff  reading,  it  is  the  great  source  from 
which  socialist  agitators  draw  their  inspiration  and  arguments. 
Apart  from  the  representative  authoritj^  with  which  it  is  thus 
invested,  it  must  be  at  once  acknowledged  to  be  an  able, 
learned,  and  important  work,  founded  on  diligent  research, 
evincing  careful  elaboration  of  materials,  much  acuteness  of 
logical  analysis,  and  so  much  solicitude  for  precision  that  a 
special  terminology  has  been  invented  to  secure  it.  The 
author's  taste  for  logical  distinctions,  however,  as  he  has 
actually  applied  it,  serves  rather  to  darken  than  to  elucidate 
his  exposition.  He  overloads  with  analysis  secondary  points 
of  his  argument  which  are  clear  enough  without  it,  and  he 
assumes  without  analysis  primary  positions  which  it  is  most 
essential  for  him  to  make  plain.  His  style  and  method  carries 
us  back  to  the  ecclesiastical  schoolmen.     His  superabcunding 


156  Contemporary  Socialism. 

love  of  scholastic  formalities  is  unmodem;  and  one  may  be 
permitted  to  hope  that  the  odium  more  than  theological  with 
which  he  speaks  of  opponents  has  become  unmodem  too. 

Marx's  argument  takes  the  form  of  an  inquiry  into  the 
origin  and  social  effects  of  capital ;  understanding  the  word 
capital,  however,  in  a  peculiar  sense.  Capital,  according  to 
the  elementary  teaching  of  political  economy,  always  means 
the  portion  of  wealth  which  is  saved  from  immediate  con- 
sumption to  be  devoted  to  productive  uses,  and  it  matters  not 
whether  it  is  so  saved  and  devoted  by  the  labourer  who  is  to 
use  it,  or  by  some  other  person  who  lends  it  to  the  labourer 
at  interest  or  employs  the  labourer  to  work  with  it  at  a  fixed 
rate  of  wages.  A  fisherman's  boat  is  capital  as  much  as  a 
Cunard  Company's  steamer,  although  the  boat  is  owned  by 
the  person  who  sails  it  and  the  steamer  by  persons  who  may 
never  have  seen  it.  The  fisherman  is  labourer  and  capitalist 
in  one,  but  in  the  case  of  the  steamer  the  capital  is  supplied 
by  one  set  of  people  and  the  labour  undertaken  by  another. 
Now  Marx  speaks  of  capital  only  after  this  division  of  func- 
tions has  taken  place.  It  is,  he  says,  not  a  logical  but  a 
historical  category.  In  former  times  men  all  wrought  for  the 
supply  of  their  own  wants,  the  seed  and  stock  they  received 
was  saved  and  owned  by  themselves,  capital  was  an  instru- 
ment in  the  hands  of  labour.  But  in  modern  times,  especially 
since  the  rise  of  foreign  commerce  in  the  16th  century,  this 
situation  has  been  gradually  reversed.  Industry  is  now  con- 
ducted by  speculators,  who  advance  the  stock  and  pay  the 
labourer's  wages,  in  order  to  make  gain  out  of  the  excess  of 
the  product  over  the  advances,  and  labour  is  a  mere  instru- 
ment in  the  hands  of  capital.  The  capitalist  is  one  who, 
without  being  personally  a  producer,  advances  money  to  pro- 
ducers to  provide  them  with  materials  and  tools,  in  the  hope 
of  getting  a  larger  sum  of  money  in  return,  and  capital  is  the 
money  so  advanced.  With  this  representation  of  capital  as 
money,  so  long  as  it  is  but  a  popular  form  of  speech,  no  fault 
need  be  found,  but  Marx  soon  after  falls  into  a  common  fallacy 
and  positively  identifies  capital  with  money,  declaring  them 
to  be  only  the  same  thing  circulating  in  a  different  way. 
Money  as  money,  he  says,  being  a  mere  medium  of  exchange, 


Karl  Marx.  157 

is  a  middle  term  between  two  commodities  wliicli  it  helps  to 
barter,  and  the  order  of  circulation  is  C —  M —  C,  i.e.  com- 
modity is  converted  into  money  and  money  is  reconverted  into 
commodity.  On  the  other  hand,  money  as  capital  stands  at 
the  two  extremes,  and  commodity  is  a  middle  term,  a  medium 
of  converting  one  sum  of  money  into  another  and  greater  ;  the 
order  of  circulation  being  expressed  as  M —  C —  M.  Of  course 
capital,  like  other  wealth,  may  be  expressed  in  terms  of  money, 
but  to  identify  capital  with  money  in  this  way  is  only  to 
introduce  confusion,  and  the  real  confusion  is  none  the  less 
pernicious  that  it  presents  itself  under  an  affectation  of  mathe- 
matical precision. 

Capital,  then,  as  Marx  understands  it,  may  be  said  to  be 
independent  wealth  employed  for  its  own  increase,  and  in 
"  societies  in  which  the  capitalistic  method  of  production  pre- 
vails "  all  wealth  bears  distinctively  this  character.  In  more 
primitive  days,  wealth  was  a  store  of  means  of  life  produced 
and  preserved  for  the  supply  of  the  producer's  future  wants, 
but  now  it  "  appears  as  a  huge  collection  of  wares,"  made  for 
other  people's  wants,  made  for  sale  in  the  market,  made  for 
its  own  increase.  "What  Marx  wants  to  discover  is  how  all 
this  independent  wealth  has  come  to  accumulate  in  hands  that 
do  not  produce  it,  and  in  particular  from  whence  comes  the 
increase  expected  from  its  use,  because  it  is  this  increase  that 
enables  it  to  accumulate.  What  he  endeavours  to  show  is 
that  this  increase  of  value  cannot  take  place  anywhere  except 
in  the  process  of  production,  that  in  that  process  it  cannot 
come  from  the  dead  materials,  but  only  from  the  living  crea- 
tive power  of  labour  that  works  upon  them,  and  that  it  is 
accordingly  virtually  stolen  from  the  labourers  who  made  it 
by  the  superior  economic  force  of  the  owners  of  the  dead 
materials,  without  which  indeed  it  could  not  be  made,  but 
whose  service  is  entitled  to  a  much  more  limited  reward. 

No  increase  of  value,  he  contends,  can  occur  in  the  process 
of  exchange,  for  an  exchange  is  a  mere  transposition  of  things 
of  equal  value.  In  one  sense  both  parties  in  the  transaction  are 
gainers,  for  each  gets  a  thing  he  wants  for  a  thing  he  does  not 
want.  The  usefulness  of  the  two  commodities  is  thus  increased 
by  the  exchange,  but  their  value  is  not.     An  exchange  simply 


158  Contemporary  Socialism. 

means  that  each  party  gives  to  the  other  equal  value  for  equal 
value,  and  even  if  it  were  possible  for  one  of  them  to  make  a  gain 
in  value  to-day — to  get  a  more  valuable  thing  for  a  less  valu- 
able thing — still,  as  all  the  world  is  buyer  and  seUer  in  turn, 
they  would  lose  to-morrow  as  buyers  what  they  gained  to-day 
as  sellers,  and  the  old  level  of  value  would  be  restored.  No 
increase  whatever  would  be  effected.  There  is  indeed  a  class 
of  people  whom  he  describes  as  alwaj's  buying  and  never 
selling — the  unproducing  class  who  live  on  their  money,  and 
who,  he  says,  receive  by  legal  titles  or  by  force  wealth  made 
by  producers  without  giving  anything  in  exchange  for  it. 
And  it  may  be  supposed  that  perhaps  value  is  created  by 
selling  things  to  this  class  of  persons,  or  by  selling  things  to 
them  above  their  true  value,  but  that  is  not  so  ;  you  would 
have  brought  no  new  value  into  the  world  by  such  a  transac- 
tion, and  even  if  you  got  more  for  your  goods  than  their 
worth,  you  would  only  be  cheating  back  from  these  rich 
people  part  of  the  money  that  they  had  previously  received 
for  nothing.  Another  supposition  remains.  Perhaps  new 
value  is  created  in  the  process  of  exchange  when  one  dealer 
takes  advantage  of  another — when  Peter,  say,  contrives  to 
induce  Paul  to  take  £40  worth  of  wine  for  £50  worth  of  iron. 
But  in  this  case  there  has  been  no  increase  of  value ;  the 
value  has  merely  changed  hands;  Peter  has  £10  more  than  he 
had  before,  and  Paul  £10  less.  The  commodities  have  between 
them  after  the  transaction,  as  they  had  before  it,  a  total  value 
of  £90,  and  that  total  cannot  be  increased  by  a  mere  change 
of  possessor. 

Having  thus  established  to  his  satisfaction  that  commerce, 
being  only  a  series  of  exchanges,  cannot  produce  any  increase 
of  value,  or  what  he  terms  surplus  value,  Marx  says  that  that 
only  makes  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  surplus  value  more 
enigmatical  than  ever.  For  we  are  thus  left  in  presence  of  an 
apparent  contradiction :  surplus  value  cannot  spring  up  in  the 
circulation  of  commodities  because  circulation  is  nothing  but 
an  exchange  of  equivalents ;  and  yet  surplus  value  cannot 
spring  up  anywhere  except  in  circulation,  because  the  class  of 
persons  who  receive  it  and  live  by  it  do  nob  produce.  Here, 
then,  is  a  riddle,  and  Marx  sets  himself  to  rede  it.     True,  he 


Karl  Marx.  159 

says,  value  is  not  created  directly  in  the  market,  but  a  com- 
modity is  purchased  in  the  market  which  has  the  remarkable 
property  of  creating  value.  That  commodity  is  the  human 
powers  of  labour.  The  very  use  of  these  powers,  their  con- 
sumption, their  expenditure,  is  the  creation  of  value.  But 
marvellous  as  they  are,  their  possessor  is  obliged  to  sell  them, 
because  while  they  are  yielding  their  product  he  must  mean- 
while live,  and  he  sells  a  day's  use  of  them  for  a  day's  means 
of  living.  They  create  in  a  day  far  more  than  the  value  of 
the  wages  for  which  they  are  bought.  This  excess  is  surplus 
value,  and  is  the  secret  and  fountainhead  of  all  accumulations 
of  capital.  Powers  which  can  create  six  shillings  worth  in  a 
day  may  be  procured  in  the  market  for  three  shillings,  because 
three  shillings  will  pay  for  their  necessary  maintenance.  Sur- 
plus value  is  the  difference  between  the  value  of  the  labourer's 
necessary  maintenance  and  the  value  of  the  labourer's  pro- 
duction, and  it  is  in  the  present  system  entirely  appropriated 
by  the  dealer  who  advances  him  his  wages. 

Marx  thus  bases  his  argument  on  two  principles  which  he 
borrows  from  current  economic  writers,  without,  however, 
observing  the  limitations  under  which  those  writers  taught 
them,  and  introducing  besides  important  modifications  of  his 
own.  The  one  principle  is  that  value  comes  from  labour,  or 
as  economists  stated  their  law,  that  the  natural  value  of  com- 
modities is  determined  by  the  cost  of  their  production.  The 
second  is  only  a  special  application  of  the  first ;  that  the 
natural  wages  of  labour  are  determined  by  the  cost  of  its  pro- 
duction, and  that  the  cost  of  the  production  of  labour  is  the 
cost  of  the  labourer's  subsistence.  The  fault  he  finds  with  the 
present  system  is  accordingly  this,  that  while  labour  creates 
all  value  it  is  paid  only  by  its  stated  living,  no  matter  how 
much  value  it  creates  ;  and  he  then  goes  over  the  phenomena 
of  modern  industrial  life  to  show  how  each  arraugement  is 
invented  so  as  to  extract  more  and  more  value  out  of  the 
labourer  by  prolonging  his  hours  of  work  or  enhancing  its 
speed  without  giving  him  any  advantage  whatever  from  the 
increase  of  value  so  obtained.  "We  shall  get  a  fair  view  of 
Marx's  argument,  therefore,  if  we  follow  it  through  the  suc- 
cessive heads :  1st,  Value ;  2nd,  Wages  ;  3rd,  Normal  day  of 


i6o  Contemporary  Socialism. 

labour ;  4tli,  Machinery ;  6tli,  Piecework ;  6tli,  Relative  over- 
population. 

1st.  Value.  Marx  holds  that  all  capital — all  industrial  ad- 
vances except  wages — is  absolutely  unproductive  of  value,  and 
therefore  not  entitled  to  the  acknowledgment  known  as  in- 
terest. The  original  value  of  all  such  capital — the  purchase 
price  of  the  materials,  together  with  a  certain  allowance  made 
for  tear  and  wear  of  machinery — is  carried  forward  into  the 
value  of  the  product,  and  preserved  in  it,  and  even  that  could 
not  be  done  except  by  labour.  The  old  value  is  preserved  by 
labour,  and  all  new  value  is  conferred  by  it,  and  therefore 
interest  is  a  consideration  entirely  out  of  the  question.  It  is 
obvious  to  object  that  labour  by  itself  is  as  unproductive  as 
capital  by  itself,  but  Marx  would  reply  that  while  labour  and 
capital  are  equally  indispensable  to  produce  new  commodities, 
it  is  labour  alone  that  produces  new  value,  for  value  is  only  so 
much  labour  preserved,  it  is  merely  a  register  of  so  many  hours 
of  work.  His  whole  argument  thus  turns  upon  his  doctrine  of 
the  nature  of  value,  and  that  doctrine  must  therefore  be  closely 
attended  to. 

What,  then,  is  value  ?  Marx  considers  that  most  errors  on 
this  subject  have  arisen  from  confusing  value  with  utility  on 
the  one  hand  or  with  price  on  the  other,  and  he  regards  his 
discrimination  of  value  from  these  two  ideas  as  his  most  im- 
portant contribution  to  political  economy.  He  takes  his  start 
from  the  distinction  current  since  the  days  of  Adam  Smith 
between  value  in  use  and  value  in  exchange,  and  of  course 
agrees  with  Smith  in  making  the  value  of  a  commodity  in 
exchange  to  be  independent  of  its  value  in  use.  Water  had 
great  value  in  use  and  none  in  exchange,  and  diamonds  had 
great  value  in  exchange  and  little  in  use.  Value  in  use  is 
therefore  not  value  strictly  so  called,  it  is  utility  ;  but  strictly 
speaking  value  in  exchange,  according  to  Marx,  is  not  value 
either,  but  only  the  form  under  which  in  our  state  of  society 
value  manifests  itself.  There  was  no  exchange  in  primitive 
society  when  every  family  produced  things  to  supply  its  own 
wants,  and  there  would  be  no  exchange  in  a  communism,  for 
in  an  exchange  the  transacting  parties  stand  to  one  another 
equally  as  private  proprietors  of  the  goods  they  barter.     And 


Karl  Marx.  i6i 

wliere  there  was  no  excliange  there  could  of  course  be  no 
exchange  value.  No  doubt  there  was  value  for  all  that  in 
primitive  times,  and  there  would  be  value  under  a  communism, 
though  it  would  manifest  itself  in  a  different  form.  But  as  we 
live  in  an  exchanging  society,  where  everything  is  made  for 
the  purpose  of  being  exchanged,  it  is  in  exchange  alone  that 
we  have  any  experience  of  value,  and  it  is  only  from  an  exam- 
ination of  the  phenomena  of  exchange  that  we  can  learn  its 
nature. 

AVhat,  then,  is  value  in  exchange?  It  is  the  ratio  in  which 
one  kind  of  useful  commodity  exchanges  against  another  kind 
of  useful  commodity.  This  ratio,  says  Marx,  does  not  in  the 
least  depend  on  the  usefulness  of  the  respective  commodities, 
or  their  capacity  of  gratifying  any  particular  want.  For,  first, 
that  is  a  matter  of  quality,  whereas  value  is  a  ratio  between 
quantities ;  and  second,  two  different  kinds  of  utility  cannot 
be  compared,  for  they'  have  no  common  measure ;  but  value, 
being  a  ratio,  implies  comparison,  and  comparison  implies  a 
common  measure.  A  fiddle  charms  the  musical  taste,  a  loaf 
satisfies  hunger,  but  who  can  calculate  how  much  musical 
gratification  is  equivalent  to  so  much  satisfaction  of  hunger. 
The  loaf  and  the  fiddle  may  be  compared  in  value,  but  not  by 
means  of  their  several  uses.  Third,  there  are  many  commodi- 
ties which  are  useful  and  yet  have  no  value  in  exchange  :  air, 
for  example,  water,  and,  he  adds,  virgin  soil.  In  seeking  what 
in  the  exchange  the  value  depends  on,  we  must  therefore  leave 
the  utility  of  the  commodities  exchanged  entirely  out  of 
account ;  and  if  we  do  so,  there  is  only  one  other  attribute  they 
all  possess  in  common,  and  it  must  be  on  that  attribute  that 
their  value  rests.  That  attribute  is  that  they  are  all  products 
of  labour.  "While  we  looked  to  the  utility  of  commodities,  they 
were  infinite  in  their  variety,  but  now  they  are  all  reduced  to 
one  sober  characteristic  they  are  so  many  different  quantities 
of  the  same  material,  labour.  Diversity  vanishes ;  there  are 
no  longer  tables  and  chairs  and  houses,  there  is  only  this  much 
and  that  much  and  the  next  amount  of  preserved  human  labour 
And  this  labour  itself  is  not  discriminated.  It  is  not  joiner 
work,  mason  work,  or  weaver  work  ;  it  is  merely  human  labour 
in  the  abstract,  incorporated,  a.bsorbed,  congealed  in  exchange- 

M 


1 62  Contemporary  Socialism. 

able  commodities.  In  an  exchange  commodities  are  quantities 
of  labour  jelly,  and  they  exchange  in  the  ratio  of  the  amount 
of  labour  they  have  taken  in. 

Value,  then,  is  quantity  of  abstract  labour,  and  now  what  is 
quantity  of  labour  ?  How  is  it  to  be  ascertained  ?  Labour  is 
the  exertion  or  use  of  man's  natural  powers  of  labour,  and  the 
quantity  of  labour  is  measured  by  the  duration  of  the  exertion. 
Quantity  of  labour  is  thus  reduced  to  time  of  labour,  and  is 
measured  by  hours  and  days  and  weeks.  Marx  accordingly 
defines  value  to  be  an  immanent  relation  of  a  commodity  to 
time  of  labour,  and  the  secret  of  exchange  is  that  "  a  day's 
labour  of  given  length  always  turns  out  a  product  of  the  same 
value."  Value  is  thus  something  inherent  in  commodities 
before  they  are  brought  to  market,  and  is  independent  of  the 
circumstances  of  the  market. 

Marx  has  no  sooner  reduced  value  to  the  single  uniform 
element  of  time  of  labour,  and  excluded  from  its  constitution 
all  considerations  of  utility  and  the  state  of  the  market,  than 
he  reintroduces  those  considerations  under  a  disguised  form. 
In  the  first  place,  if  a  day's  labour  of  given  length  always 
produces  the  same  value,  it  is  obvious  to  ask  whether  then  an 
indolent  and  unskilful  tailor  who  takes  a  week  to  make  a  coat 
has  produced  as  much  value  as  the  more  expert  hand  who  turns 
out  six  in  this  time,  or,  with  the  help  of  a  machine,  perhaps 
twenty  ?  Marx  answers.  Certainly  not,  for  the  time  of  labour 
which  determines  value  is  not  the  time  actually  taken,  but  the 
time  required  in  existing  social  conditions  to  produce  that 
particular  kind  of  commodity — the  time  taken  by  labour  of 
average  efficiency,  using  the  means  which  the  age  affords — in 
short,  what  he  calls  the  socially  necessary  time  of  labour.  Value 
is  an  immanent  relation  to  socially  necessary  time  of  labour. 
Marx's  standard  is  thus,  after  all,  not  one  of  quantity  of  labour 
pure  and  simple ;  it  takes  into  account,  besides,  the  average 
productive  power  of  labour  in  different  branches  of  industry. 
"  The  value  of  a  commodity,"  says  he,  "  changes  directly  as 
the  quantity,  and  inversely  as  the  productive  power,  of  the 
labour  which  realizes  itself  in  that  commodity."  Before  we 
know  the  value  of  a  commodity  we  must  therefore  know  not 
only  the  quantity  of  labour  that  has  gone  into  it,  but  the 


Karl  Marx,  i6 


o 


productive  power  of  that  labour.  We  gather  the  quantity 
from  the  duration  of  exertion,  but  how  is  average  productive 
power  to  be  ascertained  ?  By  simply  ascertaining  the  total 
product  of  all  the  labour  engaged  in  a  particular  trade,  and 
then  striking  the  average  for  each  labourer.  Diamonds  occur 
rarely  in  the  crust  of  the  earth,  and  therefore  many  seekers 
spend  days  and  weeks  without  finding  one.  Hits  and  misses 
must  be  taken  together  ;  the  productive  power  of  the  diamond 
seeker  is  low ;  or,  in  other  words,  the  time  of  labour  socially 
necessary  to  procure  a  diamond  is  high,  and  its  value  corre- 
sponds. In  a  good  year  the  same  labour  will  produce  twice 
as  much  wheat  as  in  a  bad  ;  its  productive  power  is  greater ; 
the  time  socially  necessary  to  produce  wheat  is  less,  and  the 
price  of  the  bushel  falls.  The  value  of  a  commodity  is  there- 
fore influenced  by  its  comparative  abundance,  whether  that  be 
due  to  nature,  or  to  machinery,  or  to  personal  skill. 

But,  in  the  next  place,  if  value  is  simply  so  much  labour,  it 
would  seem  to  follow,  on  the  one  hand,  that  nothing  could  have 
value  which  cost  no  labour,  and,  on  the  other,  that  nothing 
could  be  devoid  of  value  which  cost  labour.  Marx's  method 
of  dealing  with  these  two  objections  deserves  close  attention, 
because  it  is  here  that  the  fundamental  fallacy  of  his  argument 
is  brought  most  clearly  out.  He  answers  the  first  of  them  by 
drawing  a  distinction  between  value  and  price,  which  he  and 
his  followers  count  of  the  highest  consequence.  Things  which 
cost  no  labour  may  have  a  price,  but  they  have  no  value,  and, 
as  we  have  seen,  he  mentions  among  such  things  conscience 
and  virgin  soil.  No  labour  has  touched  those  things;  they 
have  no  immanent  relation  to  socially  necessary  time  of 
labour  ;  they  have  not,  and  cannot  have,  any  value,  as  Marx 
understands  value.  But  then,  he  says,  they  command  a  price. 
Virgin  soil  is  actually  sold  in  the  market ;  it  may  procure 
things  that  have  value  though  it  has  none  itself.  Now,  this 
distinction  between  value  and  price  has  no  bearing  on  the 
matter  at  all,  for  the  simple  reason  that,  as  Marx  himself 
admits,  price  is  only  a  particular  form  of  value.  Price,  he 
says,  is  "  the  money  form  of  value  "  ;  it  is  value  expressed  in 
money ;  it  is  the  exchange  value  of  a  commodity  for  money. 
To  say  that  uncultivated   land  may  have  a  price  but  not  a 


164  Contemporary  Socialism, 

value  is,  on  Marx's  own  showing,  to  say  that  it  has  an  ex- 
change value  which  can  be  definitely  measured  in  money,  and 
has  yet  no  value.  But  he  has  started  from  the  phenomena  of 
exchange ;  he  has  told  us  that  exchange  value  is  the  only  form 
in  which  we  experience  value  now ;  and  he  thus  arrives  at  a 
theory  of  value  which  will  not  explain  the  facts.  If  he  argued 
that  a  thing  had  value,  but  no  exchange  value,  his  position 
might  be  false,  but  he  says  that  a  thing  may  have  exchange 
value  but  no  value,  and  so  his  position  is  contradictory.  More- 
over, he  describes  money  accurately  enough  as  a  measure  of 
value,  and  says  that  it  could  not  serve  this  function  except  it 
were  itself  valuable,  i.e.,  unless  it  possessed  the  quality  that 
makes  all  objects  commensurable,  the  quality  of  being  a  pro- 
duct of  labour.  Yet  here  we  find  him  admitting  that  virgin 
soil,  which,  ex  Tiypothesi,  does  not  possess  that  quality,  and 
ought  therefore  to  be  incommensurable  with  anything  that 
possesses  it,  is  yet  measured  with  money  every  day.  Such  are 
some  of  the  absurdities  to  which  Marx  is  reduced  by  refusing 
to  admit  that  utility  can  confer  value  independently  of  labour. 
Let  us  see  now  how  he  deals  with  the  other  objection.  If 
labour  is  just  value-forming  substance,  and  if  value  is  just 
preserved  labour,  then  nothing  which  has  cost  labour  should 
be  destitute  of  value.  But  Marx  frankly  admits  that  there  are 
such  things  which  have  yet  got  no  value ;  and  they  have  no 
value,  he  explains,  because  they  have  no  utility.  "  Nothing 
can  have  value  without  being  useful.  If  it  is  useless,  the  work 
contained  in  it  is  useless,  and  therefore  has  no  value."  He 
goes  further ;  he  says  that  a  thing  may  be  both  useful  and  the 
product  of  labour  and  yet  have  no  value.  "  He  who  by  the 
produce  of  his  labour  satisfies  wants  of  his  own  produces 
utility  but  not  value.  To  produce  a  ware,  i.e.,  a  thing  which 
has  not  merely  value  in  use,  but  value  in  exchange,  he  must 
produce  something  which  is  not  only  useful  to  himself,  but 
useful  to  others,"  i.e.,  socially  useful.  A  product  of  labour 
which  is  useless  to  the  producer  and  eveiybody  else  has  no 
value  of  any  sort ;  a  product  of  labour  which,  while  useful  to 
the  producer,  is  useless  to  any  one  else,  has  no  exchange  value. 
It  satisfies  no  want  of  others.  This  would  seem  to  cover  the 
case  of  over-production,  when  commodities  lose  their  value  for 


Karl  Marx.  165 

a  time  because  nobody  wants  them.  Lassalle  explained  this 
depreciation  of  value  by  sajdng  tbat  the  time  of  labour  socially 
necessary  to  produce  the  articles  in  question  had  diminished. 
Marx  explains  it  by  saying  that  the  labour  is  less  socially 
useful  or  not  socially  useful  at  all.  And  why  is  the  labour  not 
socially  useful  ?  Simply  because  the  product  is  not  so.  The 
social  utility  or  inutility  of  the  labour  is  a  mere  inference  from 
the  social  utility  or  inutility  of  the  product,  and  it  is  therefore 
the  latter  consideration  that  influences  value.  Marx  tries  in 
vain  to  exclude  the  influence  of  that  consideration,  or  to  ex- 
plain it  as  a  mere  subsidiary  qualification  of  labour.  Labour 
and  social  utility  both  enter  equally  into  the  constitution  of 
value,  and  Marx's  radical  error  lies  in  defining  value  in  terms 
of  labour  only,  ignoring  utility. 

For  what,  after  all,  is  value?  Is  Marx's  definition  of  it 
in  the  least  correct  ?  No.  Value  is  not  an  inherent  relation 
(whatever  that  may  mean)  of  a  commodity  to  labour ;  it  is 
essentially  a  social  estimate  of  the  relative  importance  of  com- 
modities to  the  society  that  forms  the  estimate.  It  is  not  an 
immanent  property  of  an  object  at  all ;  it  is  a  social  opinion 
expressed  upon  an  object  in  comparison  with  others.  This 
social  opinion  is  at  present  collected  in  an  informal  but  effec- 
tive way,  through  a  certain  subtle  tact  acquired  in  the  market, 
by  dealers  representing  groups  of  customers  on  the  one  hand, 
and  manufacturers  representing  groups  of  producers  on  the 
other ;  and  it  may  be  said  to  be  pronounced  in  the  verdict  of 
exchange,  i.e.,  according  to  Mill's  definition  of  value,  in  the 
quantity  of  one  commodity  given  in  exchange  for  a  given 
quantity  of  another.  Now,  on  what  does  this  social  estimate 
of  the  relative  importance  of  commodities  turn  ?  In  other 
words,  by  what  is  value  and  difference  in  value  determined  ? 
Value  is  constituted  in  every  object  by  its  possession  of  two 
characteristics  :  1st,  that  it  is  socially  useful ;  2nd,  that  it  costs 
some  labour  or  trouble  to  procure  it.  No  commodity  lacks 
value  which  possesses  both  of  these  characteristics;  and  no 
commodity  has  value  which  lacks  either  of  them.  Now  there 
are  two  kinds  of  commodities.  Some  may  be  produced  to  an 
indefinite  amount  by  means  of  labour,  and  since  all  who  desire 
them  can  obtain  them  at  any  time  for  the  labour  they  cost, 


1 66  Contemporary  Socialism. 

their  social  desirableness,  their  social  utility,  has  no  influence 
on  their  value,  which,  therefore,  always  stands  in  the  ratio  of 
their  cost  of  production  alone.  Other  classes  of  commodities 
cannot  be  in  this  way  indefinitely  multiplied  by  labour ;  their 
quantity  is  strictly  limited  by  natural  or  other  causes ;  those 
who  desire  them  cannot  get  them  for  the  mere  labour  of  pro- 
ducing them  ;  and  the  value  of  commodities  of  this  sort  will 
consequently  always  stand  in  excess  of  their  relative  cost  of 
production,  and  will  be  really  determined  by  their  relative 
social  utility.  In  fact,  so  far  from  the  labour  required  for  their 
production  being  any  guide  to  their  value,  it  is  their  value 
that  will  determine  the  amount  of  labour  which  will  be 
ventured  in  their  production.  A  single  word  may  be  added 
in  explanation  of  the  conception  of  social  utility.  Of  course  a 
commodity  which  is  of  no  use  to  any  one  but  its  owner  has  no 
economic  value,  unless  it  happens  to  get  lost,  and,  in  any  case, 
it  is  of  no  consequence  in  the  present  question.  The  social 
utility  of  a  commodity  is  its  capacity  to  satisfy  the  wants  of 
others  than  the  possessor,  and  it  turns  on  two  considerations : 
1st,  the  importance  of  the  want  the  commodity  satisfies,  and, 
2nd,  the  number  of  persons  who  share  the  want.  All  com- 
modities which  derive  a  value  from  their  rarity  or  their  special 
excellence  belong  to  this  latter  class,  and  the  vice  of  Marx's 
theory  of  value  is  simply  this,  that  he  takes  a  law  which  is 
true  of  the  first  class  of  commodities  only  to  be  true  of  all 
classes  of  them. 

2.  Wages.  Having  concluded  by  the  vicious  argument  now 
explained  that  all  value  is  the  creation  of  the  personal  labour  of 
the  workman — is  but  the  registered  duration  of  exertion  of  his 
labouring  powers — Marx  next  proceeds  to  show  that,  as  things 
at  present  exist,  the  value  of  these  labouring  powers  them- 
selves is  fixed  not  by  what  they  create  but  by  what  is  neces- 
sary to  create  or  at  least  renovate  them.  The  rate  of  wages, 
economists  have  taught,  is  determined  by  the  cost  of  the 
production  of  labouring  powers,  and  that  is  identical  with  the 
cost  of  maintaining  the  labourer  in  working  vigour.  Marx 
accepts  the  usual  explanations  of  the  elasticity  of  this  standard 
of  cost  of  subsistence.     It  includes,  of  course,  the  maintenance 


Karl  Marx,  167 

of  the  labourer's  family  as  well  as  his  own,  because  he  will  die 
some  da}'-,  and  the  permanent  reproduction  of  powers  of  labour 
requires  the  birth  of  fresh  hands  to  succeed  him.  It  must  also 
cover  the  expenses  of  training  and  apprenticeship,  and  Marx 
would  probably  agree  to  add,  though  he  does  not  actually  do 
so,  a  superannuation  allowance  for  old  age.  It  contains,  too,  a 
variable  historical  element,  differs  with  climate  and  country, 
and  is,  in  fact,  just  the  customary  standard  of  living  among 
free  labourers  of  the  time  and  place.  The  value  of  a  com- 
modity is  the  time  of  labour  required  to  deliver  it  in  normal 
goodness,  and  to  preserve  the  powers  of  labour  in  normal 
goodness  a  definite  quantity  of  provisions  and  comforts  is 
necessary  according  to  time,  country,  and  customs.  The  part 
of  the  labouring  day  required  to  produce  this  definite  quantity 
of  provisions  and  comforts  for  the  use  of  the  day  may  be  called 
the  necessary  time  of  labour — the  time  during  which  the  work- 
man produces  what  is  necessary  for  keeping  him  in  existence — 
and  the  value  created  in  this  season  may  be  called  necessary 
value.  But  the  workman's  physical  powers  may  hold  on 
labouring  longer  than  this,  and  the  rest  of  his  working  day 
may  accordingly  be  called  surplus  time  of  labour^  and  the  value 
created  in  it  surplus  value.  This  surplus  value  may  be  created 
or  increased  in  two  ways  :  either  by  reducing  or  cheapening 
the  labourer's  subsistence,  i.e.,  by  shortening  the  term  of 
necessary  labour ;  or  by  prolonging  the  length  of  the  working 
day,  i.e.,  by  increasing  the  term  of  surplus  labour.  There  are 
limits  indeed  within  which  this  kind  of  action  must  stop.  The 
quantity  of  means  of  life  cannot  be  reduced  below  the 
minimum  that  is  physically  indispensable  to  sustain  the 
labourer  for  the  day,  and  the  term  of  labour  cannot  be 
stretched  beyond  the  labourer's  capacity  of  physical  endu- 
rance. But  within  these  limits  may  be  played  an  important 
role,  and  the  secret  of  surplus  value  lies  in  the  simple  plan  of 
giving  the  labourer  as  little  as  he  is  able  to  live  on,  and  work- 
ing him  as  long  as  he  is  able  to  stand.  A  labourer  works  12 
hours  a  day  because  he  cannot  work  longer  and  work  perma- 
nently and  well,  and  he  gets  three  shillings  a  day  of  wages, 
because  three  shillings  will  buy  him  the  necessities  he  requires. 
In  six  hours'  labour  he  will  create  three  shillings'  worth    of 


1 68  Contemporary  Socialism. 

value,  and  lie  works  tlie  other  six  hours  for  nothing,  creating 
three  shilHngs'  worth  of  surplus  value  for  the  master  who 
advances  him  his  wages.  It  is  from  these  causes  that  we  come 
on  the  present  system  of  things  to  the  singular  result  that 
powers  of  labour  which  create  six  shillings  a  day  are  them- 
selves worth  only  three  shillings  a  day.  This  absurd  conclu- 
sion, says  Marx,  could  never  have  held  ground  for  an  hour,  had 
it  not  been  hid  and  disguised  by  the  practice  of  paying  wages 
in  money.  This  makes  it  seem  as  if  the  labourer  were  paid  for 
the  whole  day  when  he  is  only  paid  for  the  half.  Under  the 
old  system  of  feudal  servitude  there  were  no  such  disguises. 
The  labourer  wrought  for  his  master  one  day,  and  for  himself 
the  other  five,  and  there  was  no  make-believe  as  if  he  were 
working  for  himself  all  the  time.  But  the  wages  system  gives 
to  surplus  labour  that  is  really  unpaid  the  false  appearance  of 
being  paid.  That  is  the  mystery  of  iniquity  of  the  whole 
system,  the  source  of  all  prevailing  legal  conceptions  of  the 
relation  of  employer  and  employed,  and  of  all  the  illusions 
about  industrial  freedom.  The  wages  system  is  the  lever  of 
the  labourer's  exploitation,  because  it  enables  the  capitalist  to 
appropriate  the  entire  surplus  value  created  by  the  labourer — 
i.e.,  the  value  he  creates  over  and  above  what  is  necessary  to 
recruit  his  labouring  powers  withal. 

Now  surplus  value,  as  we  have  seen,  is  of  two  kinds,  absolute 
and  relative.  Absolute  surplus  value  is  got  by  lengthening 
the  term  of  surplus  labour  ;  relative  surplus  value  by  shorten- 
ing the  term  of  necessary  labour,  which  is  chiefly  done  by 
inventions  that  cheapen  the  necessaries  of  life.  The  considera- 
tion of  the  first  of  these  points  leads  Marx  into  a  discussion  of 
the  normal  length  of  the  day  of  labour ;  and  the  consideration 
of  the  second  into  a  discussion  of  the  effects  of  inventions  and 
machinery  on  the  condition  of  the  working  classes.  We  shall 
follow  him  on  these  points  in  their  order. 

3.  Normal  day  of  labour.  There  is  a  normal  length  of  the 
day  of  labour,  and  it  ought  to  be  ascertained  and  fixed  by  law. 
Some  bounds  are  set  to  it  by  nature.  There  is  a  minimum 
length,  for  example,  beneath  which  it  cannot  fail ;  that 
minimal  limit  is  the  time  required  to  creata  an  equivalent  to 


Karl  Marx.  169 

the  labourer's  living ;  but  as  under  the  capitalistic  system  the 
capitalist  has  also  to  be  supported  out  of  it,  it  can  never  be 
actually  shortened  to  this  minimum.  There  is  also  a  maximum 
length  above  which  it  cannot  rise,  and  this  upper  limit  is  fixed 
by  two  sorts  of  considerations,  one  physical,  the  other  moral. 
1st.  Physical  limits.  These  are  set  by  the  physical  endurance 
of  the  labourer.  The  day  of  labour  cannot  be  protracted 
beyond  the  term  within  which  the  labourer  can  go  on  from 
day  to  day  in  normal  working  condition  to  the  end  of  his 
normal  labouring  career.  This  is  always  looked  to  with  respect 
to  a  horse.  He  cannot  be  wrought  more  than  eight  hours 
a  day  regularly  without  injury.  2nd.  Moral  limits.  The 
labourer  needs  time  (which  the  horse  does  not,  or  he  would 
perhaps  get  it)  for  pohtical,  intellectual,  and  social  wants, 
according  to  the  degree  required  by  society  at  the  time. 
Between  the  maximum  and  minimum  limit  there  is,  however, 
considerable  play-room,  and  therefore  we  find  labouring  days 
prevailing  of  very  different  length,  8  hours,  10,  12,  14,  16,  and 
even  18  hours.  There  is  no  principle  in  the  existing  industrial 
economy  which  fixes  the  length  of  the  day  ;  it  must  be  fixed 
by  law  on  a  sound  view  of  the  requirements  of  the  case. 
Marx  pitches  upon  8  hours  as  the  best  limit,  because  it  affords 
a  security  for  the  permanent  physical  efficiency  of  the  labourer, 
and  gives  him  leisure  for  satisfying  those  intellectual  and 
social  wants  which  are  becoming  every  day  more  largely 
imperative.  He  makes  no  use  of  the  reason  often  ui-ged  for 
the  8  hours  day,  that  the  increased  intelligence  it  would  tend 
to  cultivate  in  the  working  class  would  in  many  ways  conduce 
to  such  an  increase  of  production  as  would  justify  the  shorter 
term  of  work.  But  he  is  very  strong  for  the  necessity  of 
having  it  fixed  by  law,  and  points  out  that  even  then  employers 
will  need  to  be  carefully  watched  or  they  will  find  ways  and 
means  of  extending  the  day  in  spite  of  the  law.  "When  the 
day  was  fixed  in  England  at  10  hours  in  some  branches  of 
industry,  some  masters  gained  an  extra  quarter  or  half-hour  by 
taking  five  minutes  off  each  meal  time,  and  the  profit  made  in 
these  five  minutes  was  often  very  considerable.  He  mentions 
a  manufacturer  who  said  to  him,  "  If  you  allow  me  ten  minutes 
extra  time  every  day,  you  put  £1,000  a  year  into  my  pocket," 


I7b'  Conte^nporary  Socialism. 

and  he  says  tliatis  a  good  demonstration,  of  the  origin  of  snrphis 
value,  for  how  much  of  this  £1,000  would  be  given  to  the  man 
whose  extra  ten  minutes'  labour  had  made  it  ?  Marx  enters 
very  fully  into  the  history  of  English  factory  legislation, 
acknowledges  the  great  benefit  it  has  conferred  both  upon  the 
labouring  class  and  the  manufacturers,  and  says  that  since  the 
Act  of  1860  the  cotton  industry  has  become  the  model  industry 
of  the  country.  As  might  be  expected,  he  thinks  the  gradual 
course  taken  by  English  legislation  on  the  subject  much 
inferior,  as  a  matter  of  principle,  to  the  more  revolutionary 
method  taken  by  France  in  1848,  when  a  twelve  hours  Act  was 
introduced  simultaneously  as  a  matter  of  principle  for  every 
trade  in  the  whole  country ;  but  he  admits  that  the  results 
were  more  permanent  in  England. 

4.  Effects  of  machinery ,  and  the  growth  of  fixed  capital  on  the 
worJcing  classes.  The  whole  progress  of  industrial  improve- 
ments is  a  history  of  fresh  creations  of  relative  surplus  value, 
and  always  for  the  benefit  of  the  capitalist  who  advances  the 
money.  Everything  that  economizes  labour  or  that  adds 
positively  to  its  productivity,  contracts  the  labourer's  own  part 
of  the  working  day  and  prolongs  the  master's.  Division  and 
subdivision  of  labour,  combination,  co-operation,  organization, 
inventions,  machinery,  are  aU  "  on  the  one  hand  elements  of 
historical  progress  and  development  in  the  economic  civilization 
of  society,  but  on  the  other  are  all  means  of  civilized  and  refined 
exploitation  of  the  labourer."  They  not  only  increase  social 
wealth  at  his  expense,  but  in  many  cases  they  do  him  positive 
injury.  These  improvements  have  cost  capitalists  nothing, 
though  capitalists  derive  the  whole  advantage  from  them.  Sub- 
division, combination,  organization,  are  simply  natural  resources 
of  social  labour,  and  natural  resources  of  any  kind  are  not 
produced  by  the  capitalist.  Inventions,  again,  are  the  work 
of  science,  and  science  costs  the  capitalist  nothing.  Labour, 
association,  science — these  are  the  sources  of  the  increase ; 
capital  is  nowhere,  yet  it  sits  and  seizes  the  whole.  Machinery, 
of  course,  is  capital,  but  then  Marx  will  not  admit  that  it 
creates  any  value,  and  contends  that  it  merely  transfers  to 
the  product  the  value  it  loses  by  tear  and  wear  in  the  process 


Karl  Marx.  171 

of  production.  The  general  effect  of  industrial  improvements, 
according  to  Marx,  is — 1st,  to  reduce  wages ;  2nd,  to  prolong 
the  day  of  labour ;  3rd,  to  overwork  one-half  of  the  working 
class  ;  4th,  to  throw  the  rest  out  of  employ  ;  and,  5th,  to  concen- 
trate the  whole  surplus  return  in  the  hands  of  a  few  capitalists 
who  make  their  gains  by  exploiting  the  labourers,  and  increase 
them  by  exploiting  one  another.  This  last  point  we  need  not 
further  explain,  and  the  third  and  fourth  we  shall  unfold  under 
the  separate  heads  of  Piecework  and  Relative  Over-population. 
The  remaining  two  I  shall  take  up  now,  and  state  Marx's  views 
about  a  little  more  fully. 

(a).  Industrial  improvements  tend  to  reduce  wages.  They 
do  so,  says  Marx,  through  first  mutilating  the  labourer  in- 
tellectually and  corporeally.  As  a  result  of  subdivision  of 
labour,  workmen  are  rapidly  becoming  mere  one-sided 
specialists.  Headwork  is  being  separated  more  and  more  from 
handwork  in  the  labourer's  occupation,  and  this  differentiation 
of  function  leads  to  a  hierarchy  of  wages  which  affords  great 
opportunity  for  exploiting  the  labourer.  Muscular  power  is 
more  easily  dispensed  with  than  formerly,  and  so  the  cheaper 
labour  of  women  and  children  is  largely  superseding  the  dearer 
labour  of  men.  If  this  goes  on  much  further,  the  manufacturer 
will  get  the  labour  of  a  whole  family  for  the  wages  he  used  to 
pay  to  its  head  alone,  and  the  labourer  will  be  converted  into 
a  slave-dealer  who  sells  his  wife  and  children  instead  of  his 
own  labour.  That  this  kitid  of  slavery  will  find  no  sort  of  resis- 
tance from  either  master  or  labourer,  is  to  Marx's  mind  placed 
beyond  doubt  by  the  fact  that  though  the  labour  of  children 
under  13  years  of  age  is  restricted  in  English  factories,  adver- 
tisements appear  in  public  prints  for  "  children  that  can  pass 
for  13." 

(&).  Industrial  improvements  tend  to  lengthen  the  day  of 
labour.  Machinery  can  go  on  for  ever,  and  it  is  the  interest  of 
the  capitalist  to  make  it  do  so.  He  finds,  moreover,  a  ready 
and  specious  pretext  in  the  greater  lightness  of  the  work  as 
compared  with  hand  labour,  for  keeping  the  labourer  employed 
beyond  the  normal  limits  of  human  endurance.  Capitalists 
always  complain  that  long  hours  are  a  necessity  in  consequence 
of  the  increasing  extent  of  fixed  capital  which  cannot  other- 


172  Contemporary  Socialism. 

wise  be  made  to  pay.  But  this  is  a  mistake  on  their  part, 
says  Marx.  For,  according  to  the  factory  inspector's  reports, 
shortening  the  day  of  labour  to  10  hours  has  increased  produc- 
tion and  not  diminished  it,  and  the  explanation  is  that  the 
men  can  work  harder  while  they  are  at  it,  if  the  duration  of 
their  labour  is  shortened.  Shortening  the  day  of  labour  has 
not  only  increased  production,  but  actually  increased  wages. 
Mr.  Redgrave,  in  his  Report  for  1860,  says  that  during  the 
period  1839-1859  wages  rose  in  the  branches  of  industry  that 
adopted  the  ten  hours'  principle,  and  fell  in  trades  where  men 
wrought  14  and  16  hours  a  day.  Small  wages  and  long  hours 
are  always  found  to  go  together,  because  the  same  causes 
which  enable  the  employer  to  reduce  wages  enable  him  to 
lengthen  the  labouring  day. 

6.  Piecework.  Industrial  improvements  tend,  Marx  main- 
tains, to  overwork,  to  undue  intensification  of  labour,  for 
machinery  can  go  at  almost  any  rate  all  day  and  all  night, 
and  labourers  are  compelled  by  various  expedients  to  work  up 
to  it.  Among  these  expedients  none  is  more  strongly  con- 
demned by  Marx  than  piecework,  as  encouraging  over-exertion 
and  overtime.  He  says  that  though  known  so  early  as  the 
14  th  century,  piecework  only  came  into  vogue  with  the  large 
system  of  production,  to  which  he  thinks  it  the  most  suitable 
form  of  payment.  He  states  (though  this  is  not  quite  accurate) 
that  it  is  the  only  form  of  payment  in  use  in  workshops  that 
are  under  the  factory  acts,  because  in  these  workshops  the  day 
of  labour  cannot  be  lengthened,  and  the  capitalist  has  no  other 
way  open  to  him  of  exploiting  the  labourer  but  by  increasing 
the  intensity  of  the  labour.  He  ridicules  the  idea  of  a  writer 
who  thought  "  the  system  of  piecework  marked  an  epoch  in 
the  history  of  the  working  man,  because  it  stood  halfway 
between  the  position  of  a  mere  wage  labourer  depending  on 
the  will  of  the  capitahst  and  the  position  of  the  co-operative 
artisan  who  in  the  not  distant  future  promises  to  combine  the 
artisan  and  the  capitalist  in  his  own  person."  Better  far,  he 
holds,  for  the  labourer  to  stick  to  day's  wages,  for  he  can  be 
much  more  easily  and  extensively  exploited  by  the  piece 
system.     He  contends  that  experience  has  proved  this  in  trades 


Karl  Marx.  173 

like  tlie  compositors  and  ship  carpenters,  in  which  both  systems 
of  payment  are  in  operation  side  by  side,  and  he  cites  from  the 
factory  inspectors'  reports  of  1860  the  case  of  a  factory  employ- 
ing -KX)  hands,  200  paid  by  the  piece  and  200  by  the  day.  The 
piece  hands  had  an  interest  in  working  overtime,  and  the  day 
hands  were  obliged  to  follow  suit  without  receiving  a  farthing 
extra  for  the  additional  hour  or  half-hour.  This  might  be 
stopped  by  further  legislation,  but  then  Marx  holds  that  the 
system  of  piece  payment  is  so  prone  to  abuse  that  when  one 
door  of  exploitation  shuts  another  only  opens,  and  legislation 
will  always  remain  ineffectual.  Every  peculiarity  of  the 
system  furnishes  opportunity  either  for  reducing  wages  or 
increasing  work.  On  the  piece  system  the  worth  of  labour 
is  determined  by  the  worth  of  the  work  it  does,  and  unless  the 
work  possess  average  excellence  the  stipulated  price  is  withheld. 
There  is  thus  always  a  specious  pretext  ready  to  the  employer's 
hand  for  making  deductions  from  wages  on  the  ground  that 
the  work  done  did  not  come  up  to  the  stipulated  standard. 
Then  again,  it  furnishes  the  employer  Avith  a  definite  measure 
for  the  intensity  of  labour.  He  judges  from  the  results  of 
piecework  how  much  time  it  generally  takes  to  produce  a 
particular  piece,  and  labourers  who  do  not  possess  the  average 
productivity  are  turned  off  on  the  ground  that  they  are  unable 
to  do  a  minimum  day's  work.  Even  those  who  are  kept  on 
get  lower  average  wages  than  they  would  on  the  day  system. 
The  superior  workman  earns  indeed  better  pay  working  by 
the  piece,  but  the  general  body  do  not.  The  superior  workman 
can  afford  to  take  a  smaller  price  per  piece  than  the  others, 
because  he  turns  out  a  greater  number  of  pieces  in  the  same 
time,  and  the  employer  fixes,  from  the  case  of  the  superior 
workman,  a  standard  of  payment  which  is  injurious  to  the 
rest.  In  the  end  a  change  from  day's  wages  to  piece  wages 
will  thus  be  found  to  have  merely  resulted  in  the  average 
labourer  working  harder  for  the  same  money.  Marx,  how- 
ever, admits  that  when  a  definite  scale  of  prices  has  been  in 
long  use  and  has  become  fixed  as  a  custom,  there  are  so  many 
difficulties  to  its  reduction  that  employers  are  obliged,  when 
they  seek  to  reduce  it,  to  resort  to  violent  methods  of  trans- 
forming it  into  time  wages  again.     He  gives  an  example   of 


174  Co7itemporary  Socialism. 

this  from  the  strike  of  the  Coventry  ribbon-weavers  in  1860, 
in  resistance  to  a  transformation  of  this  kind. 

These  are  only  some  of  the  evils  Marx  lays  at  the  door  of 
piecework  ;  he  has  many  more  charges.  From  rendering  the 
superintendence  of  labour  unnecessary,  it  leads  to  abuses  like 
the  sub-contracts  known  in  this  country  as  "  the  sweating 
system,"  or  what  is  a  variety  of  the  same,  to  contracts  of  the 
employer  with  his  manager,  whereby  the  latter  becomes  re- 
sponsible for  the  whole  work,  and  emploj's  and  pays  the  men. 
From  making  it  the  pecuniaiy  interest  of  the  labourer  to  work 
overtime,  piecework  induces  him  to  overstrain  his  powers,  and 
both  to  transgress  the  legal  or  normal  limits  of  the  day  of 
labour,  and  to  raise  or  exceed  the  normal  degree  of  the  intensity 
of  labour.  Marx,  quoting  from  Dunning,  says  that  it  was 
customary  in  the  engineering  trade  in  London  for  employers 
to  engage  a  foreman  of  exceptional  physical  powers,  and  pay 
him  an  extra  salary  per  quarter  to  keep  the  men  up  to  his  own 
pace ;  an  expedient  which,  he  adds,  is  actually  recommended 
to  farmers  by  Morton  in  his  "  Agricultural  Encjxlopsedia." 
He  attributes  to  piecework,  especially  in  its  operation  on 
women  and  children,  the  degeneration  of  the  labouring  class 
in  the  potteries,  which  is  shown  in  the  Report  of  the  Com- 
mission on  the  Employment  of  Children.  But  while  Marx 
thus  objects  to  piecework  because  it  leads  to  overwork,  he 
objects  to  it  also  because  it  leads  to  underwork.  It  enables 
employers  to  engage  more  hands  than  they  require,  when  they 
entertain  perhaps  only  an  imaginary  expectation  of  work,  for 
they  know  they  run  no  risk,  since  paying  by  the  piece  they 
pay  only  for  what  is  done.  The  men  are  thus  imperfectly 
employed  and  insufficiently  paid. 

6.  Relative  Over-population.  One  of  the  worst  features  of 
modem  industrial  development  is  the  vast  number  of  labourers 
whom  it  constantly  leaves  out  of  employ.  This  Marx  calls 
relative  over-population.  Of  absolute  over-population  he  has 
no  fear.  He  is  not  a  Malthusian.  He  holds  that  there  is  no 
population  law  applicable  to  all  countries  and  times  alike. 
Social  organisms  differ  from  one  another  as  do  animals  and 
plants ;  they  have  different  laws  and  conditions.     Every  coun- 


Karl  Marx.  i75 

try  and  age  has  its  own  law  of  population.  A  constant  and 
increasing  over-population  is  a  characteristic  of  the  present 
age  ;  it  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  existing  method  of 
carrying  on  industry ;  but  it  is  nothing  in  the  nature  of  an 
absolute  over-growth  ;  it  is  only,  to  Marx's  thinking,  a  relative 
superfluity.  There  is  plenty  of  work  for  all,  more  than  plenty. 
If  those  who  have  employment  were  not  allowed  to  be  over- 
wrought, and  if  work  were  to-morrow  to  be  limited  to  its  due 
amount  for  every  one  according  to  age  and  sex,  the  existing  work- 
ing population  would  be  quite  insufficient  to  carry  on  the  national 
production  to  its  present  extent.  Even  in  England,  where  the 
technical  means  of  saving  labour  are  enormous,  this  could  not  be 
done  except  by  converting  most  of  our  present  "  unproductive" 
labourers  into  productive.  There  is  therefore,  Marx  conceives, 
no  reason  why  any  one  should  be  out  of  work  ;  but  at  present, 
what  with  the  introduction  of  new  machinery,  the  industrial 
cycles,  the  commercial  crises,  the  changes  of  fashion,  the 
transitions  of  every  kind,  we  have  always,  besides  the  industrial 
army  in  actual  service,  a  vast  industrial  reserve  who  are  either 
entirely  out  of  employment  or  very  inadequately  employed. 
This  relative  over-population  is  an  inevitable  consequence  of 
the  capitalistic  management  of  industry,  which  first  compels 
one-half  of  the  labouring  community  to  do  the  work  of  all,  and 
then  makes  use  of  the  redundancy  of  labour  so  created  to 
compel  the  working  half  to  take  less  pay.  Low  wages  spring 
from  the  excessive  competition  among  labourers  caused  by  this 
relative  over-population.  "  Rises  and  falls  in  the  rate  of  wages 
are  universally  regulated  by  extensions  and  contractions  in  the 
industrial  reserve  army  which  correspond  with  changes  in  the 
industrial  cycle.  They  are  not  determined  by  changes  in  the 
absolute  number  of  the  labouring  population,  but  through 
changes  in  the  relative  distribution  of  the  working  class  into 
active  army  and  reserve  army — through  increase  or  decrease  in 
the  relative  numbers  of  the  surplus  population — through  the 
degree  in  which  it  is  at  one  time  absorbed  and  at  another 
dismissed."  The  fluctuations  in  the  rate  of  wages  are  thus 
traced  to  expansions  or  contractions  of  capital,  and  not  to 
variation  in  the  state  of  population.  Marx  ridicules  the  theory 
of  these  fluctuations  given  by  political  economists,  that  high 


I 


176  Contemporary  Socialism. 

wages  lead  to  their  own  fall  by  encouraging  marriages,  and  so 
in  the  end  increasing  the  supply  of  labour,  and  that  low  wages 
lead  to  their  own  rise  by  discouraging  mari'iages  and  reducing 
the  supply  of  labour.  That,  says  Marx,  is  very  fine,  but  before 
high  wages  could  have  produced  a  redundant  population 
(which  would  take  eighteen  years  to  grow  up),  wages  would, 
with  modem  industrial  cycles,  have  been  up,  down,  and  up 
again  through  ordinary  fluctuations  of  trade. 

Relative  over-population  is  of  three  kinds  :  current,  latent, 
and  stagnant.  Current  over -population  is  what  comes  from 
incidental  causes,  the  ordinary  changes  that  take  place  in  the 
every-day  course  of  industry.  A  trade  is  slack  this  season  and 
brisk  the  next,  has  perhaps  its  own  seasons,  like  house-painting 
in  spring,  posting  in  summer.  Or  one  trade  may  from  tempo- 
rary reasons  be  busy,  while  others  are  depressed.  In  the  last 
half  year  of  1860  there  were  90,000  labourers  in  London  out  of 
employment,  and  yet  the  factory  inspectors  report  that  at  that 
very  time  much  machinery  was  standing  idle  for  want  of 
hands.  This  comes  from  the  labourer  being  mutilated — that 
is,  specialized — under  modem  subdivision  of  labour,  and  fit  for 
only  a  single  narrow  craft.  Another  current  cause  of  over- 
population is  that  under  the  stress  of  modem  labour  the 
workman  is  old  before  his  years,  and  while  still  in  middle  life 
becomes  unfit  for  full  work,  and  passes  into  the  reserve.  Marx 
says  this  is  the  real  reason  for  the  prevalence  of  early  marriages 
among  the  working  class.  They  are  generally  condemned  for 
being  improvident,  but  they  are  really  resorted  to  from  con- 
siderations of  providence,  for  working  men  foresee  that  they 
wiU  be  prematurely  disabled  for  work,  and  desire,  when  that 
day  comes,  to  have  grown-up  children  about  them  who  shall  be 
able  to  support  them.  Other  current  causes  are  new  inventions 
and  new  fashions,  which  always  throw  numbers  out  of  work. 
Latent  over-population  is  what  springs  from  causes  whose 
operation  is  long  and  slow.  The  best  example  of  it  is  the  case 
of  the  agricultural  labourers.  They  are  being  gradually  super- 
seded by  machinery,  and  as  they  lose  work  in  the  country  they 
gather  to  the  towns  to  swell  the  reserve  army  there.  A  great 
part  of  the  farm  servants  are  always  in  this  process  of  transi- 
tion, a  few  here,  and  a  few  there,  and  a  few  everywhere.     The 


Karl  Marx.  177 

constancy  of  this  flow  indicates  a  latent  over-population  in  the 
rural  districts,  and  that  is  the  cause  of  the  low  wages  of 
agricultural  labourers.  By  stagnant  over-population  Marx 
means  that  which  is  shown  in  certain  branches  of  industry, 
where  none  of  the  workmen  are  thrown  back  entirely  into  the 
reserve,  but  none  get  full  regular  employment. 


N 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   FEDERALISM   OF   GAEL   MAELO. 

Maelo  and  Eodbertus  are  sometimes  spoken  of  as  the  pre- 
cursors of  German  socialism.  This,  however,  is  a  mistake. 
The  socialism  which  now  exists  appeared  in  Germany  among 
the  Young  Hegelians  forty  years  ago,  before  the  writings  of 
either  of  these  economists  were  published,  and  their  writings 
have  had  very  little  influence  on  the  present  movement. 
Rodbertus,  it  is  true,  communicated  a  decided  impulse  to 
Lassalle,  both  by  his  published  letter  to  Von  Kirchmann 
in  1853,  and  by  personal  correspondence  subsequently.  He 
was  a  landed  proprietor  of  strongly  liberal  opinions,  who  was 
appointed  Minister  of  Agriculture  in  Prussia  in  1848,  but  after 
k  brief  period  of  office  retired  to  his  estates,  and  devoted 
himself  to  economic  and  historical  study.  He  took  a  very 
decided  view  of  the  defects  of  the  existing  industrial  system, 
and  held  in  particular  that,  in  accordance  with  Ricardo's  law 
of  necessary  wages,  the  labourer's  income  could  never  rise 
permanently  above  the  level  of  supplying  him  with  a  bare 
subsistence,  and  consequently  that,  while  his  labour  was 
always  increasing  in  productivity,  through  mechanical  inven- 
tions and  other  means,  the  share  which  he  obtained  of  the 
product  was  always  decreasing.  What  was  required  was 
simply  to  get  this  tendency  counteracted,  and  to  devise 
arrangements  by  which  the  labourer's  share  in  the  product 
might  increase  proportionally  with  the  product  itself,  for 
othenvise  the  whole  working  population  would  be  left  behind 
by  the  general  advancement  of  society.  The  remedy,  he 
conceives,  must  lie  in  the  line  of  a  fresh  contraction  of  the 
sphere  of  private  property.  That  sphere  had  been  again  and 
again  contracted  in  the  interests  of  personal  development,  and  it 

178 


The  Federalism  of  Carl  Mario.  179 

must  be  so  once  more.  And  the  contraction  that  was  now 
necessary  was  to  leave  nothing  whatever  in  the  nature  of 
private  property  except  income.  This  proposal  is  substantially 
identical  with  the  scheme  of  the  socialists ;  it  is  just  the 
nationalization  of  all  permanent  stock  ;  but  then  he  holds  that 
it  could  not  be  satisfactorily  carried  out  in  less  than  five 
hundred  years.  Rodbertus's  writings  have  never  been  widely 
knouTi,  but  they  attracted  some  attention  among  the  German 
working  class,  and  he  was  invited,  along  with  Lassalle  and 
Lothar  Bucher,  to  address  the  "Working  Men's  Congress  in 
Leipzig  in  1863.  He  promised  to  come  and  speak  on  the  law 
of  necessary  wages,  but  the  Congress  was  never  held  in 
consequence  of  the  action  of  Lassalle  in  precipitating  his  own 
movement,  and  from  that  movement  Rodbertus  held  entirely 
aloof.  He  agreed  with  Lassalle's  complaints  against  the  present 
order  of  things,  but  he  disapproved  of  his  plan  of  reform.  He 
did  not  think  the  scheme  of  founding  productive  associations 
on  State  credit  either  feasible  or  desirable,  and  he  would  still 
retain  the  system  of  wages,  though  with  certain  improvements 
introduced  by  law.  He  thought,  moreover,  that  Lassalle  erred 
gravely  in  making  the  socialists  a  political  party,  and  that 
thQy  should  have  remained  a  purely  economic  one.  Besides, 
he  looked  on  it  as  mere  folly  to  expect,  with  Lassalle,  the 
accomplishment  in  thirty  years  of  changes  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  he  believed  five  centuries  little  enough  time  to  evolve. 

Rodbertus  may  thus  be  said  to  have  had  some  relations  with 
the  present  movement,  but  Mario  stands  completely  apart  from 
it :  and  his  large  and  important  work,  "  Untersuchungen  iiber 
die  Organization  der  Arbeit,  oder  System  der  "Welt-okonomie," 
published  at  Kassel  in  1850-5 — though  original,  learned,  and 
lucid — remained  so  absolutely  unknown  that  none  of  the 
lexicons  mention  his  name,  and  even  an  economist  like 
Schaefifle — who  was  the  first  to  draw  public  attention  to  it,  and 
has  evidently  been  considerably  influenced  by  it  himself — had 
never  read  it  till  he  was  writing  his  own  work  on  socialism 
(1870).  But  though  Mario  cannot  be  said  to  have  contributed 
in  any  respect  to  the  present  socialistic  movement,  his  work 
deserves  attentive  consideration  as  a  plea  for  fundamental 
social    reform,   advanced    by    a    detached    and    independent 


i8o  Contemporary  Socialism, 

thinker,  who  has  given  years  of  patient  study  to  the  pheno- 
mena of  modern  economic  life,  and  holds  them  to  indicate 
the  presence  of  a  deep-seated  and  widespread  social  disease. 
Carl  Mario  is  the  nom  de  plume  of  a  German  professor  of 
chemistry  named  Winkelblech,  and  he  gives  us  in  the  preface 
to  his  second  volume  a  touching  account  of  how  he  came  to 
apply  himself  to  social  questions.  In  1843  he  made  a  tour  of 
investigation  through  Northern  Europe  in  connection  with  a 
technological  work  he  was  engaged  in  writing,  and  visited 
among  other  places  the  blue  factory  of  Modum,  in  Norway, 
where  he  remained  some  days,  charmed  with  the  scenery, 
which  he  thought  equal  to  that  of  the  finest  vallej-s  of  the  Alps. 
One  morning  he  went  up  to  a  neighbouring  height,  whence  he 
could  see  the  whole  valley,  and  was  calmly  enjoying  the  view 
when  a  German  artisan  came  to  ask  him  to  undertake  some 
commission  to  friends  in  the  fatherland.  They  engaged  in  con- 
versation. The  artisan  went  over  his  experiences,  and  re- 
peated all  the  privations  he  and  his  fellows  had  to  endure. 
His  tale  of  sorrow,  so  alien  apparently  to  the  ravishing  beauty 
around,  made  a  profound  impression  on  Winkelblech,  and 
altered  the  purpose  and  work  of  his  life.  "  AVhat  is  the 
reason,"  he  asked  himself,  "  that  the  paradise  before  my  eyes 
conceals  so  much  misery  ?  Is  nature  the  source  of  all  this 
suffering,  or  is  it  man  that  is  to  blame  for  it  ?  I  had  before, 
like  so  many  men  of  science,  looked,  while  in  workshops,  only 
on  the  forges  and  the  machinery,  not  on  the  men — on  the  pro- 
ducts of  human  industry,  and  not  on  the  producers,  and  I  was 
quite  a  stranger  to  this  great  empire  of  misery  that  lies  at  the 
foundation  of  our  bcasted  civilization.  The  touching  words 
of  the  artisan  made  me  feel  the  nullity  of  my  scientific  work 
and  life  in  its  whole  extent,  and  from  that  moment  I  resolved 
to  make  the  sufferings  of  our  race,  with  their  causes  and 
remedies,  the  subject  of  my  studies."  He  pursued  these 
studies  with  the  greatest  industry  for  several  years,  and  found 
the  extent  of  men's  sufferings  to  be  greatly  beyond  his  ex- 
pectation. Poverty  prevailed  everywhere — among  labourers 
and  among  employers,  too — with  peoples  of  the  highest  in- 
dustrial development,  and  with  peoples  of  the  lowest — in 
luxurious  cities,  and  in  the  huts  of  villagers — in  the  rich  plains 


The  Federalism  of  Carl  Mario.  i8i 

of  Lombardy,  no  less  than  the  sterile  wilds  of  Scandinavia. 
He  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  causes  of  all  this  lay  not 
in  nature,  but  in  the  fact  that  human  institutions  rested  on 
false  economic  foundations,  and  he  held  the  only  possible 
remedy  to  consist  in  improving  these  institutions.  He  became 
convinced  that  technical  perfection  of  production,  however 
great,  would  never  be  able  to  extinguish  poverty  or  lead  to 
the  diffusion  of  general  comfort,  and  that  civilization  was  now 
come  to  a  stage  in  its  development  at  which  further  progress 
depended  entirely  on  the  advancement  of  political  economy. 
Political  economy  was,  therefore,  for  our  time  the  most  impor- 
tant of  all  sciences,  and  Winkelblech  now  determined  to  give 
himself  thoroughly  to  its  study.  Hitherto  he  had  not  done  so. 
"  During  the  progress  of  my  investigations,"  he  says,  "  the  doc- 
trines of  economists,  as  well  as  the  theories  of  socialists,  remained 
almost  unknown  to  me  except  in  name,  for  I  intentionally 
abstained  from  seeking  any  knowledge  of  either,  in  order  that 
I  might  keep  myself  as  free  as  possible  from  extraneous  influ- 
ences. It  was  only  after  I  arrived  at  the  results  described  that 
I  set  myself  to  a  study  of  economic  literature,  and  came  to 
perceive  that  the  substance  of  my  thoughts,  though  many  of 
them  were  not  new,  and  stood  in  need  of  correction,  departed 
completely  from  the  accepted  principles  of  the  science."  He 
reached  the  conclusion  that  there  prevailed  everywhere  the 
symptoms  of  a  universal  social  disease,  and  that  political 
economy  was  the  only  physician  that  could  cure  it ;  but  that 
the  prevailing  system  of  economy  was  quite  incompetent  for 
that  task,  and  that  a  new  system  was  urgently  and  indis- 
pensably required.  To  set  forth  such  a  system  is  the  aim  of 
his  book.  He  derides  Proudhon's  idea  of  social  reforms  coming 
of  themselves  without  design,  and  argues  strongly  that  no 
reform  worthy  the  name  can  ever  be  expected  except  as  the 
fruit  of  economic  researches.  He  agrees  with  the  Socialists 
in  so  far  as  they  seek  to  devise  a  new  economic  system,  but 
he  thinks  they  make  a  defective  diagnosis  of  the  disease,  and 
propose  an  utterly  inadequate  remedy.  He  counts  them 
entirely  mistaken  in  attributing  all  existing  evils  to  the  un- 
equal distribution  of  wealth,  a  deficiency  of  production  being, 
in  his  opinion,  a  much  more  important  source  of  misery  than 


1 82  Contemporary  Socialism. 

any  error  of  distribution.  In  fact,  his  fundamental  objection  to 
the  existing  distribution  is  that  it  is  not  the  distribution  which 
conduces  to  the  highest  production,  or  to  the  most  fruitful  use 
of  the  natural  resources  at  the  command  of  society.  He  differs 
from  the  German  socialists  in  always  looking  at  the  question 
from  the  standpoint  of  society  in  general,  rather  than  from  that 
of  the  proletariat  alone,  and  he  maintains  that  a  new  organiza- 
tion of  labour  is  even  more  necessary  for  the  interest  of  the 
capitalists  than  for  that  of  the  labourers,  because  he  believes 
the  present  system  will  infallibly  lead,  unless  amended,  to 
the  overthrow  of  the  capitalist  class,  and  the  introduction  of 
communism.  His  point  of  view  is  moreover  purely  economic 
and  scientific,  entirely  free  from  all  partizan  admixture,  and 
while  he  declares  himself  to  be  a  zealous  member  of  the  re- 
publican party,  he  says  that  he  purposely  abstains  from  inter- 
vention in  politics  because  he  regards  the  political  question  as  one 
of  very  minor  rank,  and  holds  that,  with  sound  social  arrange- 
ments, people  could  live  more  happily  under  the  Russian 
autocracy  than,  with  unsound  ones,  they  could  do  under  the 
French  republic.  The  organization  of  labour  is,  in  his  opinion, 
something  quite  independent  of  the  form  of  the  State,  and  its 
final  aim  ought  to  be  to  produce  the  amount  of  wealth  necessary 
to  diffuse  universal  comfort  among  the  whole  population  without 
robbing  the  middle  classes.  These  characteristics  sufficiently 
separate  him  from  the  socialist  democrats  of  the  present  day. 

His  book  was  published  gradually  in  parts,  sometimes  after 
long  intervals,  between  1848  and  1856,  and  it  was  finally  inter- 
rupted by  his  death  in  1866.  A  second  edition  appeared  in 
1885,  containing  some  additions  from  his  manuscripts,  but  the 
work  remains  incomplete.  It  was  to  have  consisted  .of  three 
parts ;  1st,  a  historical  part,  containing  an  exposition  and  esti- 
mate of  the  various  economic  systems ;  2nd,  an  elementary  or 
doctrinal  part,  containing  an  exposition  of  the  principles  of 
economic  science ;  and,  3rd,  a  practical  part,  explaining  his  plan 
for  the  organization  of  labour.  The  first  two  parts  are  all  we 
possess ;  the  third,  and  most  important,  never  appeared,  which 
must  be  regretted  by  all  who  recognise  the  evidences  of  original 
power  and  singular  candour  that  the  other  parts  present. 

Mario's  account  of  the  social  problem  is  that  it  arises  from 


The  Federalism  of  Carl  Mario.  183 

the  fact  that  our  present  industrial  organization  is  not  in 
correspondence  with  the  idea  of  right  which  is  recognised  by 
the  public  opinion  of  the  time.  That  idea  of  right  is  the 
Christian  one,  which  takes  its  stand  on  the  dignity  of  man- 
hood, and  declares  that  all  men,  simply  because  they  are  men, 
have  equal  rights  to  the  greatest  possible  happiness.  Up  till 
the  French  Revolution,  the  idea  of  right  that  prevailed  was 
the  heathen  one,  which  might  be  called  the  divine  right  of  the 
stronger.  The  weak  might  be  made  a  slave  without  wrong. 
He  might  be  treated  as  a  thing  and  not  as  a  person  or  an 
equal,  who  had  the  same  right  with  his  master  or  his  feudal 
superior  to  the  greatest  possible  enjoyment.  Nature  belonged 
to  the  conqueror,  and  his  dominion  was  transmitted  by  privi- 
lege. Inequality  of  right  was  therefore  the  characteristic  of 
this  period  ;  Mario  calls  it  monopolism.  But  at  the  French 
Revolution  the  Christian  idea  of  right  rose  to  its  due  ascendancy 
over  opinion,  and  the  sentiments  of  love  and  justice  began  to 
assume  a  control  over  public  arrangements.  Do  as  you  would 
be  done  by,  became  a  rule  for  politics  as  well  as  for  private 
life,  and  the  weak  were  supported  against  the  strong.  Equality 
of  right  was  the  mark  of  the  new  period  ;  Mario  calls  it  panpol- 
ism.  This  idea  could  not  be  realized  before  the  present  day, 
because  it  had  never  before  taken  possession  of  the  public 
mind,  but  it  has  done  this  now  so  thoroughly  that  it  cannot  be 
expected  to  rest  till  it  has  realized  itself  in  every  direction  in 
all  the  practical  applications  of  which  it  is  susceptible.  The 
final  arbiter  of  institutions  is  alway<S  the  conception  of  right 
prevailing  at  the  time ;  contemporary  industrial  arrangements 
are  out  of  harmony  with  the  contemporary  conception  of  right; 
and  stability  cannot  be  looked  for  until  this  disturbance  is 
completely  adjusted. 

Now  the  first  attempts  that  society  made  to  effect  this  adjust- 
ment were  not  unnaturally  attended  with  imperfection.  In 
the  warmth  of  their  recoil  from  the  evils  of  monopolism,  men 
ran  into  extreme  and  distorted  embodiments  of  the  opposite 
principle,  and  they  ran  contrary  ways.  These  contrary  ways 
are  Liberalism  and  Communism.  Liberalism  fixed  its  atten- 
tion mainly  on  the  artificial  restrictions,  the  privileges,  the 
services,  the  legal  bonds  by  which  monopoly  and  inequality 


184  Contemporary  Socialism. 

were  kept  up,  and  it  thought  a  perfect  state  of  society  would 
be  brought  about  if  only  every  chain  were  snapped  and 
every  fetter  stripped  away.  It  conceived  the  road  to  the 
greatest  possible  happiness  for  every  man  was  the  greatest 
possible  freedom  ;  it  idolized  the  principle  of  abstract  liberty, 
and  it  fancied  if  evil  did  not  disappear,  it  was  always  because 
something  still  remained  that  needed  emancipation.  Com- 
munism, on  the  other  hand,  kept  its  eyes  on  the  inequalities  of 
monopolistic  society ;  imagined  the  true  road  to  the  greatest 
possible  happiness  was  the  greatest  possible  equality  ;  that  all 
ills  would  vanish  as  soon  as  things  were  levelled  enough ;  in 
short,  it  idolized  the  principle  of  abstract  equaUty.  Modern 
Liberalism  and  modern  Communism  are  therefore  of  equal 
birth ;  they  have  the  same  historical  origin  in  the  triumph  of 
the  principle  of  equality  of  right  in  1789  ;  they  are  only  differ- 
ent modes  of  attempting  to  reduce  that  principle  to  practice ; 
and  Liberalism  happens  to  be  the  more  widely  disseminated  of 
the  two,  not  because  it  represents  that  principle  better,  but 
merely  because  being  more  purely  negative  than  the  other,  it 
was  easier  of  introduction,  and  so  got  the  start  of  Communism 
in  the  struggle  of  existence.  According  to  Mario,  they  are 
both  equally  bad  representatives  of  the  principle,  and  their 
chief  good  lies  in  their  mutual  criticism,  by  means  of  which 
they  prepare  the  way  for  the  true  system,  the  system  of 
Federalism,  which  will  be  presently  explained.  The  history 
of  revolution,  he  says,  begins  in  the  victory  of  Liberalism  and 
Communism  together  over  Monopolism ;  it  proceeds  by  the 
conflict  of  the  victors  with  one  another,  and  it  ends  in  the  final 
triumph  of  Federalism  over  both. 

Mario  next  criticises  the  two  systems  of  Liberalism  and 
Communism  with  considerable  acuteness.  Both  the  one  and 
the  other  are  Utopias  ;  they  are  absorbed  in  realizing  an 
abstract  principle,  and  they,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  produce 
exactly  the  opposite  of  what  they  aim  at.  Communism  seeks 
to  reach  the  greatest  possible  happiness  by  introducing  first 
the  greatest  possible  equality.  But  what  is  equality  ?  Is  it 
equality  when  each  man  gets  a  coat  of  the  same  size,  or  is  it 
not  rather  when  each  man  gets  a  coat  that  fits  him  ?  Some 
communists  would  accept  the  former  alternative.     They  would 


The  Federalism  of  Carl  Mario.  185 

measure  off  the  same  length  to  the  dwarf  and  the  giant,  to 
the  ploughman  and  the  judge,  to  the  family  of  three  and  the 
family  of  thirteen.  But  this  would  be  clearly  not  equality, 
but  only  inequality  of  a  more  vicious  and  vexatious  kind. 
Most  communists,  however,  prefer  the  second  alternative,  and 
assign  to  every  man  according  to  his  needs,  to  every  man  the 
coat  that  fits  him.  But  then  we  must  first  have  the  cloth, 
and  that  is  only  got  by  labour,  and  every  labourer  ought  if 
possible  to  produce  his  own  coat.  The  motive  to  labour,  how- 
ever, is  weakened  on  the  communistic  system ;  and  if  those  who 
work  less  are  to  be  treated  exactly  like  those  who  work  more, 
then  that  would  be  no  abolition  of  monopoly,  but  merely  the 
invention  of  a  new  monopoly,  the  monopoly  of  indolence  and 
incapacity.  The  skilful  and  industrious  would  be  exploited 
by  the  stupid  and  lazy.  Besides,  production  would  for  the 
same  reason,  insufficient  inducement  to  labour,  be  diminished, 
progress  would  be  stopped,  and  therefore  the  average  of 
human  happiness  would  decline.  Communism  thus  conducts 
to  the  opposite  of  everything  it  seeks.  It  seeks  equality,  it 
ends  in  inequality;  it  seeks  the  abolition  of  monopoly,  it 
creates  a  new  monopoly  ;  it  seeks  to  increase  happiness,  it 
actually  diminishes  it.  It  is  a  pure  utopia,  and  why  ?  Because 
it  misunderstands  its  own  principle.  Equality  does  not  mean 
giving  equal  things  to  every  man ;  it  means  merely  affording 
the  greatest  possible  playroom  for  the  development  of  eveiy 
personality,  and  that  is  exactly  the  principle  of  freedom.  The 
greatest  possible  equality  and  the  greatest  possible  freedom 
can  only  be  realized  together  ;  they  must  spring  out  of  the 
same  conditions,  and  a  system  of  right  which  shall  adjust  these 
conditions  is  just  what  is  now  wanted. 

Liberalism  is  a  failure  from  like  causes.  It  seeks  to  realize 
happiness  by  freedom  ;  it  realizes  neither.  For  it  mistakes  the 
nature  of  freedom,  as  the  Communists  mistake  the  nature  of 
equality.  It  takes  freedom  to  be  the  power  of  doing  what  one 
likes,  instead  of  being  the  power  of  doing  what  is  right.  Its 
whole  bent  is  to  exempt  as  much  as  possible  of  life  from 
authoritative  restraint,  and  to  give  as  much  scope  as  exigencies 
will  allow  to  the  play  of  individuality.  It  is  based  on  no 
positive  conception  of  right  whatever,  and  looks  on  the  State 


1 86  Contemporary  Socialis7n. 

as  an  alien  whose  interference  is  something  exceptional,  only- 
justified  on  occasional  grounds  of  public  necessity  or  general 
utility.  It  fails  to  see  that  there  are  really  no  affairs  in  a  com- 
munity which  are  out  of  relation  to  the  general  wellbeiug, 
and  destitute  of  political  significance.  Nothing  demonstrates 
the  error  of  this  better  than  the  effects  of  the  Liberal  regime 
itself.  For  half  a  century  the  industrial  concerns  of  the  people 
have  been  treated  as  matters  of  purely  private  interest,  and 
this  policy  has  resulted  in  a  political  as  well  as  economical 
revolution.  Industrial  freedom,  which  has  produced  capitalism 
in  the  economic  field,  has  resulted  in  political  life  in  the 
ascendancy  of  a  new  class,  a  plutocracy,  "  the  worst  masters," 
said  De  Tocqueville,  "  the  world  has  yet  seen,  though  their 
reign  will  be  short."  The  change  which  was  effected  by  the 
legislation  of  the  Revolution  was  not  a  development  of  a 
fourth  estate,  as  is  sometimes  said ;  it  was  really  nothing  more 
than  the  creation  of  a  money  aristocracy,  and  the  putting  of 
them  in  the  place  of  the  old  hereditary  nobility.  The  sj'stem 
of  industrial  right  that  happens  to  prevail,  therefore,  so  far 
from  being,  as  Liberals  fancy,  outside  the  sphere  of  political 
interest,  is  in  truth  the  very  element  on  which  the  distribution 
of  political  power,  in  the  last  analysis,  depends.  Nothing  is 
more  political  than  the  social  question.  Liberals  think  slight 
of  that  question,  but  it  is,  says  Mario,  the  real  question  of  the 
day,  and  it  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  question  of  the 
existence  or  abolition  of  Liberalism,  the  question  of  the  main- 
tenance or  subversion  of  the  principle  of  industrial  freedom, 
the  question  of  the  ascendancy  or  overthrow  of  a  money 
aristocracy.  The  fight  of  our  age  is  a  fight  against  a  pluto- 
cracy bred  of  Liberalism.  It  is  not,  as  some  represent  it,  a 
struggle  of  labourers  against  employers ;  it  is  a  joint  struggle  of 
labourers  and  lower  bourgeoisie  against  the  higher  honrgeohie^ 
a  struggle  of  those  who  work  and  produce  against  those  who 
luxuriate  idly  on  the  fruits  of  others'  labour.  As  compared 
with  this  question,  constitutional  questions  are  of  very  minor 
importance,  for  no  matter  whether  the  State  be  monarchy  or 
republic,  if  the  system  of  industrial  right  that  prevails  in  it  be 
the  system  of  industrial  freedom,  the  real  power  of  the  country 
will  be  in  the  hands  of  the  capitalist  class.     He  who  fails  to 


The  Federalism  of  Carl  Mario.  187 

see  this,  says  Mario,  fails  to  understand  tlie  spirit  of  his  time 
It  is  always  the  national  idea  of  right  that  governs  both  in 
social  and  political  relations,  and  as  long  as  the  national  idea 
of  right  is  that  of  Liberalism,  we  shall  continue  to  have  capi- 
talism and  a  plutocracy.  It  is  the  mind  that  builds  the  body 
up,  and  it  is  only  when  a  new  system  of  right  has  taken  as 
complete  possession  of  the  national  consciousness  as  Liberalism 
did  in  1789,  that  the  present  social  conflict  will  cease  and  a 
better  order  of  things  come  in. 

From  want  of  such  a  system  of  right — from  want  even  of 
seeing  the  necessity  for  it,  Liberalism  has  defeated  its  own 
purpose.  It  sought  to  abolish  monopoly  ;  it  has  only  sub- 
stituted for  the  old  monopoly  of  birth  the  more  grievous 
monopoly  of  wealth.  It  sought  to  establish  freedom  ;  it  has 
only  established  plutocratic  tyranny.  It  has  erred  because  it 
took  for  freedom  an  abstraction  of  its  own  and  tried  to  realize 
that,  just  as  Communism  erred  by  taking  for  equality  an 
abstraction  of  its  own  and  trying  to  realize  that.  The  most 
perfect  state  of  freedom  is  not  reached  when  every  man  has 
the  power  of  doing  what  he  likes,  any  more  than  the  most 
perfect  state  of  equality  is  reached  when  every  man  has  equal 
things  with  every  other ;  but  the  greatest  possible  freedom  is 
attained  in  a  condition  of  society  where  every  man  has  the 
greatest  possible  play-room  for  the  development  of  his  person- 
ality, and  the  greatest  possible  equality  is  attained  in  exactly 
the  same  state  of  things.  Real  freedom  and  real  equality  are 
in  fact  identical.  Every  right  contains  from  the  first  a  social 
element  as  well  as  an  individual  element,  and  it  cannot  be 
realized  in  the  actual  world  without  observing  a  due  adjust- 
ment between  these  two  elements.  Such  an  adjustment  can 
only  be  discovered  by  a  critical  examination  of  the  economic 
constitution  of  society,  and  must  then  be  expressed  in  a  distinct 
system  of  industrial  right,  which  imposes  on  individual  action 
its  just  limits.  True  liberty  is  liberty  within  these  limits  ;  and 
the  true  right  of  property  is  a  right  of  property  under  the  same 
conditions.  The  fundamental  fault  of  Liberalism,  the  cause 
of  its  failure,  is  simply  that  it  goes  to  work  without  a  sound 
theory  of  right,  or  rather  perhaps  without  any  clear  theory  at 
all,  and  merely  aims  at  letting  every  one  do  as  he  likes,  with 


1 88  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  understanding  that  the  State  can  always  be  called  in  to 
correct  accidents  and  excesses. 

This  defect  is  what  Federalism  claims  to  supply.  It  claims 
to  be  the  only  theory  that  abandons  abstractions  and  keeps 
closely  to  the  nature  of  things,  and  therefore  to  be  the  onAy 
theory  that  is  able  to  realize  even  approximately  the  Christian 
principle  of  equality  of  right.  The  name  furnishes  no  very 
precise  clue  to  the  conclusion  it  designates,  and  it  has  no 
reference  to  the  federative  form  of  State,  for  which  Mario 
expressly  disavows  having  any  partiality.  He  has  chosen  the 
word  merely  to  indicate  the  fact  that  society  is  an  organic 
confederation  of  many  different  kinds  of  associations — families, 
churches,  academies,  mercantile  companies,  and  so  on ;  that 
association  is  not  only  a  natural  form,  but  the  natural  form  in 
which  man's  activity  tends  to  be  carried  on ;  and  that  in  any 
sound  system  of  industrial  right  this  must  be  recognised  by 
an  extension  of  the  collective  form  of  property  and  the  co- 
operative form  of  production.  Communism,  says  Mario,  is 
mechanical,  LiberaUsm  is  atomistic,  but  Federalism  is  organic. 
When  he  distinguishes  his  theory  from  communism,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  it  is  from  the  communism  which  he  has 
criticised,  and  which  he  would  prefer  to  denominate  Equalism  ; 
it  is  from  the  communism  of  Baboeuf,  which  would  out  of 
hand  give  every  man  according  to  his  needs,  and  would 
consequently,  through  impairing  the  motives  to  industry,  leave 
those  needs  themselves  in  the  long  run  less  satisfactorily 
provided  for  than  they  are  now.  But  his  system  is  nearly 
identical  with  the  communism  of  the  Young  Hegelians  of  his 
own  time — that  is,  with  the  German  socialism  of  the  present 
day — although  he  arrived  at  it  in  entire  independence  of  their 
agitations,  and  builds  it  on  deductions  peculiar  to  himself. 
Like  them,  he  asks  for  the  compulsory  transformation  of  laud 
and  the  instruments  of  production  from  private  property  into 
collective  property ;  Hke  them,  he  asks  for  this  on  grounds  of 
social  justice,  as  the  necessary  mechanism  for  giving  effect  to 
positive  rights  that  are  set  aside  under  the  present  system ; 
and  he  says  himself,  "If  you  ask  the  question,  how  is  the 
democratic  social  republic  related  to  Federalism,  the  most 
suitable  answer  is,  as  the  riddle  to  its  solution." 


The  Federalism  of  Carl  Mario.  189 

He  starts  from  the  position  that  all  men  have  equally  the 
right  to  property.  Not  merely  in  the  sense,  which  is  com- 
monly acknowledged,  that  they  have  the  right  to  property  if 
they  have  the  opportunity  of  acquiring  it ;  but  in  the  further 
significance,  that  they  have  a  right  to  the  opportunity.  They 
are  in  fact  born  proprietors — de  jure  at  least,  and  they  are  so 
for  two  reasons.  First,  God  has  made  them  persons,  and 
not  things,  and  they  have,  therefore,  all  equally  a  natural 
right  to  their  amplest  personal  development.  If  society  inter- 
feres with  this  liberty  of  personal  development — if  it  suffers 
any  of  its  members  to  become  the  slaves  of  others,  for  example 
— it  robs  them  of  original  rights  which  belong  to  them  by  the 
mere  fact  of  their  manhood.  But,  secondly,  property,  resources 
of  some  sort,  being  indispensable  means  of  personal  develop- 
ment, God,  who  has  imposed  the  end,  has  supplied  the  means. 
He  has  given  nature,  the  earth  and  the  lower  creation,  into  the 
dominion  of  man,  not  of  this  or  that  man,  or  class  of  men,  but 
of  mankind,  and  consequently  every  man  has,  equally  with 
every  other,  a  right  to  participate  in  the  dominion  of  nature, 
a  right  to  use  its  bounty  to  the  extent  required  for  his  personal 
development.  No  appropriation  of  nature  can  be  just  which 
excludes  this  possibility  and  robs  any  man  of  this  natural  right. 
It  is,  therefore,  wrong  to  allow  to  any  single  person,  or  to  any 
limited  number  of  persons,  an  absolute  dominion  over  natural 
resources  in  which  everybody  else  has,  by  nature,  a  right  to 
some  extent  to  share.  He  who  should  have  complete  and 
exclusive  lordship  over  all  nature,  would  be  lord  and  master 
of  all  his  fellow-men,  and  in  a  period  after  natural  agents  are 
all  appropriated  the  system  of  complete  and  absolute  property 
leaves  the  new-comers  at  the  mercy  of  those  who  are  already 
in  possession.  They  can  only  work  if  the  latter  give  them 
the  productive  instruments ;  they  can  only  reap  from  their 
work  so  much  of  its  fruits  as  the  latter  are  pleased  to  leave 
with  them  ;  and  they  must  perish  altogether  unless  the  latter 
employ  them.  They  are  slaves,  they  are  beggars  ;  and  yet 
they  came  into  the  world  with  the  rights  of  a  proprietor,  of 
which  they  can  never  be  divested.  Nature  laid  covers  for 
them  as  well  as  for  the  rest,  and  a  system  of  property  is 
essentially  unjust  which  ousts  them  from   their  seat  at  her 


IQO  Contemporary  Socialism. 

table.  The  common  theory  of  property  starts  from  the 
premiss,  that  all  men  have  the  right  to  property,  and  draws 
the  conclusion,  that,  therefore,  some  men  have  the  right  to 
monopolize  it.  As  usually  understood,  the  proprietary  right 
is  as  much  a  right  of  robbery  as  a  right  of  property,  and 
Proudhon  would  have  been  quite  correct  in  describing  property 
as  theft,  if  no  better  system  of  property  could  be  devised  than 
the  present. 

But  such  a  system  can  be  devised  ;  one  under  which  the 
right  of  new-comers  may  be  respected  without  disturbing  those 
of  possessors.  This  can  only  be  done  by  putting  entirely  aside 
the  complete  and  absolute  form  of  property  which  is  in  so 
much  favour  with  Liberalism,  and  by  making  the  right  of 
property  in  any  actual  possession  a  strictly  limited  and  circum- 
scribed right  from  the  first — the  right  not  to  an  arbitrary 
control  over  a  thing,  but  to  a  just  control  over  it.  So  long  as 
property  is  always  thought  of  as  an  arbitrary  and  absolute 
dominion  over  a  thing,  the  proprietary  right  cannot  possibly 
be  explained  in  a  way  that  does  not  make  it  a  right  given  to 
some  to  rob  others.  Why  not,  therefore,  define  property  from 
the  beginning  as  subject  to  limitations,  and  contrive  a  new 
form  or  system  of  it,  in  which  these  limitations  shall  for  ever 
receive  due  recognition,  and  no  man  be  thereafter  denied  the 
opportunity  of  acquiring  as  much  of  the  bounty  of  nature  as  is 
necessary  for  him  to  carry  out  his  personal  development  ? 

That  is  Mario's  task,  and  it  would  have  been  an  easy  one,  if 
all  goods,  if  everything  that  satisfies  a  human  want,  had  been 
supplied  directly  by  nature,  as  air  is  supplied,  without  the 
need  of  industry  to  procure  it  or  the  power  of  industry  to 
multiply  it.  Then  the  problem  would  be  solved  very  simply 
as  the  earlier  communists  desired  to  solve  it.  Every  member 
of  society  would  be  entitled  to  partake  of  nature's  supplies,  1 5 
he  now  does  of  air,  in  the  measure  of  his  need,  and  when  those 
supplies  ran  exhausted,  just  as  when  the  air  became  vitiated, 
society  would  be  entitled,  nay  obliged,  to  suppress  further 
propagation.  But  the  question  is  far  from  being  so  simple. 
Nature  only  yields  her  bounties  to  us  after  labour  ;  they  are 
only  converted  into  means  of  life  by  labour;  and  they  are 
capable  of  being  vastly  multiplied  by  labour.     This  element  of 


The  Federalism  of  Carl  Mario.  191 

labour  changes  the  situation  of  things  considerably,  and  must 
be  allowed  a  leading  role  in  determining  a  just  right  and 
system  of  property.  The  only  case  where  a  proprietary  right 
can  be  recognised  which  is  unmodified  by  this  consideration, 
is  the  case  of  those  who  are  unable  to  labour.  They  fall  back 
on  their  original  right  to  a  share  in  the  bounty  of  nature  in 
the  measure  that  their  personal  development  requires ;  in 
other  words,  according  to  their  needs.  Their  share  does  not 
lie  waste,  though  they  are  unable  to  work  it  themselves,  and 
their  share  belongs  to  them  immediately  because  they  are 
persons,  and  not  because  they  may  afterwards  become  la- 
bourers. Mario  recognises,  therefore,  antecedently  to  labour 
the  right  to  existence,  and  this  right  he  proposes  to  realize  for 
the  weak  and  disabled  by  means  of  a  compulsory  system  of 
national  insurance. 

The  other  natural  proprietary  rights  are  consequent  in  one 
way  or  another  upon  labour.  First,  there  is  the  right  to 
labour.  If  every  man  has  a  right  to  a  share  in  the  dominion 
of  nature,  then  every  man  who  is  able  to  labour  has  a  right  to 
obtain  the  natural  resources  that  are  necessary  to  give  him 
employment  according  to  capacity  and  trade.  No  private 
appropriation  of  these  resources  can  divest  him  of  his  title  to 
get  access  to  them,  and  if  he  cannot  find  work  himself,  the 
State  is  bound  to  provide  it  for  him  in  public  workshops. 
Second,  every  man  has  a  right  to  the  most  profitable  possible 
application  of  labour  to  natural  resources.  He  has  an  interest 
in  seeing  the  common  stock  put  to  the  best  account,  and  he  is 
wronged  in  this  interest  when  waste  is  permitted,  when  in- 
ferior methods  are  resorted  to,  or  when  the  distribution  .of 
work  and  materials  is  ill  arranged.  Now  the  best  arrangement' 
is  when  each  man  is  equipped  according  to  the  measure  and 
quality  of  his  powers.  Nature  will  be  then  best  worked,  and 
man's  personal  development  will  then  be  best  furthered.  If 
such  an  arrangement  cannot  be  effected  on  the  system  of  pro- 
perty now  in  vogue,  while  it  may  be  under  another,  it  is  every 
man's  right  to  have  the  former  system  supplanted  by  the 
latter.  The  most  economical  form  of  property  is  the  most  just. 
Third,  the  next  right  is  a  right  to  an  almost  unlimited  control 
over  the  fruits  of  one's  own  labour.     Not  over  the  means  of 


192  Contemporary  Socialism. 

labour ;  these  can  only  be  justly  or  economically  held  by  a 
circumscribed  control;  but  over  the  fruits  of  labour.  These 
ought  to  be  retained  as  exclusive  property,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  the  natural  resources  will  be  so  turned  to  the  best 
account.  On  any  other  system  of  payment  the  motive  to 
labour  is  impaired,  and  the  amount  of  its  produce  diminished. 
Distribution  by  need  defeats  its  own  end ;  the  very  needs 
of  the  community  would  be  less  amply  satisfied  after  it  than 
before  it.  Distribution  according  to  work  is  the  sound  econo- 
mic principle,  and  therefore  the  just  one.  Mario  here  leaves 
room  for  the  play  of  the  hereditary  principle  and  of  competi- 
tion to  some  extent,  and  he  allows  the  free  choice  of  occupation 
on  similar  grounds.  Men  will  work  best  in  lines  their  own 
tastes  and  powers  lead  them  to.  Everything  is  determined  by 
economic  utility,  and  economic  utility  is  supposed  to  be  at  its 
height  when  the  natural  resources  of  a  country  are  distributed 
among  its  inhabitants  according  to  the  requirements  of  their 
labouring  powers. 

This  condition  of  things  can  only  be  realized,  first,  if  popula- 
tion is  regulated  ;  second,  if  unproductive  labour  is  suppressed  ; 
and  third,  if  the  means  of  labour  are  made  common  property. 
The  necessity  for  regulating  population  comes,  of  course,  from 
the  limitation  of  the  natural  resources  at  society's  command. 
In  any  community  there  is  a  certain  normal  limit  of  popula- 
tion— the  limit  at  which  all  the  natural  resources  are  distri- 
buted among  all  the  inhabitants  according  to  their  powers — 
and  the  community  will  learn  when  this  limit  is  reached  from 
the  number  of  workmen  who  are  unable  to  obtain  private 
employment,  and  are  obliged  to  seek  work  from  the  State. 
Then  it  can  regulate  population  by  various  expedients.  It  may 
require  the  possession  of  a  certain  amount  of  fortune  as  a  preli- 
minary condition  to  marriage,  and  raise  this  amount  according 
to  necessit3^  It  may  encourage  emigration.  It  may  forbid 
marriages  under  a  fixed  age,  and  to  prevent  illegitimacy,  it 
might  give  natural  children  the  same  rights  as  legitimate  ones. 
But  Mario  trusts  most  to  the  strong  preventive  check  that 
would  be  supplied  by  the  power  imparted  to  working  men 
tinder  the  Federal  regime  of  improving  their  position. 

The  same  necessity  that  makes  it  legitimate,  and,  indeed, 


The  Federalism  of  Carl  Mario.  193 

imperative  to  regulate  population,  makes  it  legitimate  and  im- 
perative also  to  suppress  what  Mario  calls  unproductive  acqui- 
sition, i.e.,  the  acquisition  by  persons  who  are  able  to  work  of 
any  other  property  than  they  earn  as  the  fruit  of  their  work ; 
and  to  suppress  likewise  all  waste  of  the  means  of  life  and 
enjoyment,  such,  for  example,  as  is  involved  in  the  mainte- 
nance of  unnecessary  horses,  dogs,  or  other  animals  that  only 
eat  up  the  products  of  the  soil.  The  obligation  to  labour  and 
the  curtailment  of  luxury  would  come  into  exercise  before  the 
restrictions  on  population,  and  be  more  and  more  rigorously 
enforced  as  the  normal  limit  of  population  was  approximated. 

But  the  most  important  and  the  most  necessary  innovation 
is  the  conversion  of  land  and  the  instruments  of  production 
into  the  form  of  collective  property.  The  form  in  which  pro- 
perty should  be  held  ought  to  be  strictly  determined  b}'' 
considerations  of  economic  utility.  From  such  considerations 
the  Liberals  themselves  have  introduced  important  changes 
into  the  system  of  property ;  they  have  abolished  fiefs,  heredi- 
tary tenancies,  entail,  servitudes,  church  and  village  lands,  all 
the  peculiarities  of  monopolistic  society,  because,  as  they  said, 
they  wished  to  substitute  a  good  form  of  property  for  a  bad  ; 
and  they  at  least  have  no  right,  Mario  thinks,  to  turn  round 
now  on  Communists  or  Federalists  for  proposing  to  supersede 
this  good  form  of  property  by  a  better.  They  have  themselves 
transformed  property  by  law,  and  they  have  transformed  it  on 
grounds  of  economic  advantage  ;  they  have  owned  that  the 
economic  superiority  of  a  particular  form  of  property  imposes 
a  public  obligation  for  its  compulsory  introduction.  They 
asserted  the  competency  of  the  State  against  the  monopolists, 
and  they  cannot  now  deny  it  against  the  socialists.  If  the 
private  form  of  property  is  best,  then  let  the  State  maintain  it; 
but  if  the  collective  form  is  best,  then  the  State  is  bound,  even 
on  the  principles  of  Liberals  themselves,  to  introduce  it.  The 
question  can  only  be  determined  by  experience  of  the  com- 
parative economic  utility  of  the  two.  Without  offering  any 
detailed  proof  of  his  proposition  from  experience  Mario  then 
affirms  that  the  most  advantageous  form  of  property  is  reached 
when  the  instruments  of  production  are  the  collective  property 
of  associations,  and  the  instruments  of  enjoyment  (except  wells, 

o 


194  Contemporary  Socialism. 

bridges,  and  the  like)  are  the  property  of  individuals.  Each 
man's  house  would  still  be  his  castle ;  his  house  and  the  fulness 
thereof  would  still  belong  to  him ;  but  outside  of  it  he  could 
acquire  no  individual  possessions.  Of  land  and  the  means  of 
labour,  he  should  be  joint-proprietor  with  others,  or  rather 
joint-tenant  with  them  under  the  Crown.  Industrial  property 
would  be  held  in  common  by  the  associations  that  worked  it, 
and  these  associations  would  be  organized  by  authority  with 
distinct  charters  of  powers  and  functions. 

Mario  thus  arrives  at  the  same  practical  scheme  as  Marx, 
though  by  a  slightly  different  road.  Marx  builds  his  claim  on 
Ricardo's  theory  of  value  and  Eicardo's  law  of  necessary  wages. 
Mario  builds  his  on  man's  natural  right,  as  a  sharer  in  the  do- 
minion of  nature,  to  the  most  advantageous  exercise  of  that 
dominion. 


CHAPTER  VL 

THE   SOCIALISTS    OF   THE    CHAIB. 

The  Socialists  of  the  Chair  have  done  themselves  injustice  and 
sown  their  course  with  embarrassing  misconceptions  by  adopt- 
ing too  hastily  an  infelicitous  name.  It  is  more  descriptive 
than  most  political  nicknames,  and  therefore  more  liable  to 
mislead.  It  was  first  used  in  1872  in  a  pamphlet  by  Oppen- 
heim,  then  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  National  Liberals,  to 
ridicule  a  group  of  young  professors  of  political  economy  who 
had  begun  to  show  a  certain  undefined  sympathy  with  the 
socialist  agitations  of  Lassalle  and  Von  Schweitzer,  and  to 
write  of  the  wrongs  of  the  labouring  classes  and  the  evils  of 
the  existing  industrial  system  with  a  flow  of  emotion  which 
was  thought  to  befit  their  years  better  than  their  position.  A 
few  months  later  these  young  professors  called  together  at 
Eisenach  a  Congress  of  all  who  shared  their  general  attitude 
towards  that  class  of  questions.  In  opening  this  Congress — 
which  was  attended  by  almost  every  economist  of  note  in 
Germany,  and  by  a  number  of  the  weightiest  and  most 
distinguished  Liberal  politicians — Professor  Schmoller  em- 
ployed the  name  "  Socialists  of  the  Chair  "  to  describe  himself 
and  those  present,  without  adding  a  single  qualifying  remark, 
just  as  if  it  had  been  their  natural  and  chosen  designation. 
The  nickname  was  no  doubt  accepted  so  readily,  partly  from 
a  desire  to  take  the  edge  off  the  sneer  it  was  meant  to  convey, 
but  partly  also  from  the  nobler  feeling  which  makes  men  stand 
by  a  truth  that  is  out  of  favour.  Not  that  they  approved  of 
the  contentions  of  social  democracy  out  and  out,  but  they 
believed  there  was  more  basis  of  truth  in  them  than  persons  in 
authority  were  inclined  to  allow,  and  besides  that  the  truth 
they  contained  was  of  special  and  even  pressing  importance. 
They  held,  as  Schmoller  said,  that  "  Social  Democracy  was 


196  Conte^nporary  Socialism. 

itself  a  consequence  of  the  sins  of  modern  Liberalism."  Tliey 
went  entirely  with  the  Social  Democrats  in  maintaining  both 
that  a  grave  social  crisis  had  arisen,  and  that  it  had  been 
largely  brought  about  by  an  irrational  devotion  on  the  part  of 
the  Liberals  to  the  economic  doctrine  of  JaUsez-faire.  But 
they  went  further  with  them.  They  believed  that  the  salvation 
of  modern  society  was  to  come,  not  indeed  from  the  particular 
scheme  of  reconstruction  advocated  by  the  Social  Democrats, 
but  still  from  applications  in  one  form  or  another  of  their 
fundamental  principle,  the  principle  of  association.  And  it 
was  for  that  reason — it  was  for  the  purpose  of  marking  the 
value  they  set  upon  the  associative  principle  as  the  chief  source 
of  healing  for  the  existing  ills  of  the  nations — that  they  chose 
to  risk  misunderstanding  and  obloquy  by  accepting  the  nick- 
name put  upon  them  by  their  adversaries.  The  late  Professor 
Held,  who  claims  as  a  merit  that  he  was  the  first  to  do  so, 
explains  very  clearly  what  he  meant  by  calling  himself  a 
socialist.  Socialism  may  signify  many  different  things,  but, 
as  he  uses  the  word,  it  denotes  not  any  definite  system  of 
opinions  or  any  particular  plan  of  social  reform,  but  only  a 
general  method  which  may  guide  various  systems,  and  may 
be  employed  more  or  less  according  to  circumstances  in  direct- 
ing many  different  reforms.  He  is  a  socialist  because  he  would 
give  much  more  place  than  obtains  at  present  to  the  associative 
principle  in  the  arrangements  of  economic  life,  and  because 
he  cannot  share  in  the  admiration  many  economists  express  for 
the  purely  individualistic  basis  on  which  these  arrangements 
have  come  to  stand.  A  socialist  is  simply  the  opposite  of  an 
individualist.  The  individualist  considers  that  the  perfection 
of  an  industrial  economy  consists  in  giving  to  the  principles  of 
self-interest,  private  property,  and  free  competition,  on  which 
the  present  order  of  things  is  founded,  the  amplest  scope  they 
are  capable  of  receiving,  and  that  all  existing  economic  evils 
are  due,  not  to  the  operation  of  these  principles,  but  only  to 
their  obstruction,  and  will  gradually  disappear  when  self- 
interest  comes  to  be  better  understood,  when  competition  is 
facilitated  by  easier  inter-communication,  and  when  the  law 
has  ceased  from  troubling  and  left  industry  at  rest.  The 
socialist,  in  Held's  sense,  is,  on  the  other  hand,  one  who  rejects 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  197 

the  comfortable  theory  of  the  natural  harmony  of  individual 
interests,  and  instead  of  deploring  the  obstructions  which 
embarrass  the  operations  of  the  principles  of  competition,  self- 
interest,  and  private  property,  thinks  that  it  is  precisely  in 
consequence  of  these  obstructions  that  industrial  society  con- 
trives to  exist  at  all.  Strip  these  principles,  he  argues,  of  the 
restraints  put  upon  them  now  by  custom,  by  conscience,  by 
public  opinion,  by  a  sense  of  fairness  and  kind  feeling,  and  the 
inequalities  of  wealth  would  be  immensely'"  aggravated,  and 
the  labouring  classes  would  be  unavoidably  ground  to  misery. 
Industrial  society  would  fall  into  general  anarchy,  into  a  })ellum 
omniiim  contra  omnes,  in  which  they  that  have  would  have 
more  abundantly,  and  they  that  have  not  would  lose  even  what 
they  have.  Held  declines  to  join  in  the  admiration  bestowed 
by  many  scientific  economists  upon  this  state  of  war,  in  which 
the  battle  is  always  to  the  rich.  He  counts  it  neither  the  state 
of  nature,  nor  the  state  of  perfection,  of  economic  society, 
but  simply  an  unhappy  play  of  selfish  and  opposing  forces, 
which  it  ought  to  be  one  of  the  distinct  aims  of  political 
economy  to  mitigate  and  counteract.  Individualism  has 
already  had  too  free  a  course,  and  especially  in  the  immediate 
past  has  enjoyed  too  sovereign  a  reign.  The  work  of  the 
world  cannot  be  carried  on  by  a  fortuitous  concourse  of  hostile 
atoms,  moving  continually  in  a  strained  state  of  suspended 
social  war,  and  therefore,  for  the  very  safety  of  industrial 
society,  we  must  needs  now  change  our  tack,  give  up  our 
individualism,  and  sail  in  the  line  of  the  more  positive  and 
constructive  tendencies  of  socialism.  To  Held's  thinking 
accordingly,  socialism  and  individualism  are  merely  two 
contrary  general  principles,  ideals,  or  methods,  which  may  be 
employed  to  regulate  the  constitution  of  economic  society, 
and  he  declares  himself  a  socialist  because  he  believes  that 
society  suffers  at  present  from  an  excessive  application  of  the 
individualistic  principle,  and  can  only  be  cured  by  an  extensive 
employment  of  the  socialistic  one. 

This  is  all  clear  enough,  but  it  is  simply  giving  to  the  word 
socialism  another  new  meaning,  and  creating  a  fresh  source  of 
ambiguity.  That  term  has  already  contracted  definite  associa- 
tions which  it  is  impossible  to  dispel  b}^  mere  word  of  mouth, 


198  Contemporary  Socialis77t. 

and  which  constitute  a  refracting  medium  through  which  the 
principles  of  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair  cannot  fail  to  be  pre- 
sented in  a  very  misleading  form.  These  writers  assume  a 
special  position  in  two  relations — first,  as  theoretical  economists  ; 
and,  second,  as  practical  politicians  or  social  reformers  ;  and  in 
both  respects  alike  the  term  socialism  is  peculiarly  inappro- 
priate to  describe  their  views.  In  regard  to  the  first  point,  by 
adopting  that  name  they  have  done  what  they  could  to  "  Nico- 
demus"  themselves  into  a  sect,  whereas  they  might  have 
claimed,  if  they  chose,  to  be  better  exponents  of  the  catholic 
tradition  of  the  science  than  those  who  found  fault  with  them. 
This  is  a  claim,  however,  which  they  would  be  shocked  indeed 
to  think  of  presenting.  With  a  natural  partiality  for  their 
own  opinions,  they  exaggerated  immensely  the  extent  and  also 
the  value  of  their  divergence  from  the  traditional  or,  as  it  is 
sometimes  called,  the  classical  economics.  In  the  energy  of 
their  recoil  from  the  dogmatism  which  had  for  a  generation 
usurped  an  excessive  sway  over  economic  science,  they  were 
carried  too  far  in  the  opposite  direction,  but  they  had  in  their 
own  minds  the  sensation  that  they  were  carried  a  great  deal 
farther  than  they  really  were.  They  liked  to  think  of  their 
historical  method  as  constituting  a  new  epoch,  and  effecting  a 
complete  revolution  in  political  economy,  but,  as  will  subse- 
quently appear,  that  method,  when  reduced  to  its  real  worth, 
amounts  to  no  more  than  an  application,  with  somewhat 
distincter  purpose  and  wider  reach,  of  the  method  which 
Smith  himself  followed.  Of  this  they  are  in  some  degree 
conscious.  Brentano,  who  belongs  to  the  extreme  right  of  the 
school,  says  that  Smith  would  have  been  a  Socialist  of  the 
Chair  to-day  if  he  were  alive ;  and  Samter,  who  belongs  to  the 
extreme  left,  though  he  is  doubtful  regarding  Smith,  has  no 
hesitation  in  claiming  Mill,  whom  he  looks  upon  as  standing 
more  outside  than  inside  the  school  of  Smith.  Their  position 
is,  therefore,  not  the  new  departure  which  many  of  them 
would  fain  represent  it  to  be.  They  are  really  as  natural  and 
as  legitimate  a  line  of  descent  from  Adam  Smith  as  their 
adversaries  the  German  Manchester  Party  who  claimed  the 
authority  of  his  name.  Perhaps  they  are  even  more  so,  for  in 
science  the  true  succession  lies  with  those  who  carry  the  prin- 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  199 

ciples  of  the  master  to  a  more  fruitfal  development,  and  not 
with  those  who  embalm  them  as  sacred  but  sterile  simulacra. 

But  it  is  as  practical  reformers  that  the  Socialists  of  the 
Chair  suffer  most  injustice  from  their  name.  Since  the  word 
socialism  was  first  used  by  Reybaud  fifty  years  ago,  it  has 
always  been  connected  with  Utopian  or  revolutionary  ideas. 
Now  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair  are  the  very  opposite  of 
revolutionaries  both  by  creed  and  practice.  None  of  the 
various  parties  which  occupy  themselves  with  the  social 
problem  in  Germany  is  so  eminently  and  advisedly  practical. 
Their  very  historical  method,  apart  from  anything  else,  makes 
them  so.  It  gives  them  a  special  aversion  to  political  and 
social  experiments,  for  it  requires  as  the  first  essential  of  any 
project  of  reform  that  it  shall  issue  naturally  and  easily  out  of 
— or  at  least  be  harmonious  with — the  historical  conditions  of 
the  time  and  place  to  which  it  is  to  be  applied.  Roscher,  who 
may  be  regarded  as  the  founder  of  the  school,  says  that 
reformers  ought  to  take  for  their  model  Time,  whose  reforms 
are  the  surest  and  most  irresistible  of  all,  but  yet  so  gradual  that 
they  cannot  be  observed  at  any  given  moment.  They  make, 
therefore,  on  the  whole  a  very  sparing  use  of  the  socialistic 
principle  they  invoke.  Certainly  the  world,  in  their  eyes,  is 
largely  out  of  joint,  but  its  restoration  is  to  proceed  gently, 
like  Solomon's  temple,  without  sound  of  hammer.  Some  of 
them  of  course  go  farther  than  others,  but  they  would  all  still 
leave  us  rent,  wages,  and  profits,  the  three  main  stems  of 
individualism.  They  struck  the  idea  of  taxing  speculative 
profits  out  of  their  programme,  and  so  far  from  having  any 
socialistic  thought  of  abolishing  inheritance,  none  of  them 
except  Von  Scheel  would  even  tax  it  exceptionally,  Samter 
stands  alone  m  urging  the  nationalization  of  the  land ;  and 
Waguer  stands  alone  in  desiring  the  abolition  of  private 
property  in  ground-rents  in  towns  ;  the  other  members  cannot 
agree  even  about  the  expediency  of  nationalizing  the  railways. 
They  work  of  set  purpose  for  a  better  distribution  of  wealth — 
for  what  Schmoller  calls  a  progressive  equalization  of  the 
excessive  and  even  dangerous  differences  of  culture  that  exist 
at,  present — but  they  recoil  from  all  suggestion  of  schemes  of 
repartition,  and  they  have  no  fault  to  find  with  inequality  in 


200  Contemporary  Socialism. 

itself.  On  the  contrary  they  regard  inequality  as  being  not 
merely  an  unavoidable  result  of  men's  natural  endowments, 
but  an  indispensable  instrument  of  their  progress  and  civiliza- 
tion. SchmoUer  explains  that  their  political  principles  are 
those  of  Radical  Toryism,  as  portrayed  in  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
novels;  and  he  means  that  they  rest  on  the  same  active 
sympathy  with  the  ripening  aspirations  of  the  labouring  classes, 
and  the  same  zealous  confidence  in  the  authority  of  the  State, 
and  in  these  respects  are  distinguished  from  modem  Liberalism, 
whose  governing  sympathies  are  with  the  interests  and  ideas 
of  the  bourgeoisie^  and  which  entertains  a  positive  jealousy  of 
the  action  of  the  State.  The  actual  reforms  which  the 
Socialists  of  the  Chair  have  hitherto  promoted  have  been  in 
the  main  copied  from  our  own  English  legislation — our  Factory 
Acts,  our  legalization  of  Trade  Unions,  our  Savings  Banks,  our 
registration  of  Friendly  Societies^  our  sanitary  legislation,  etc., 
etc. —  measures  which  have  been  passed,  with  the  concurrence 
of  men  of  opposite  shades  of  opinion,  out  of  no  social  theory 
but  from  a  plain  regard  to  the  obvious  necessities  of  the  hour. 
So  that  we  have  been  simply  Socialists  of  the  Chair  for  a 
generation  without  knowing  it,  doing  from  a  happy  political 
instinct  the  works  which  they  deduce  out  of  an  elaborate 
theory  of  economic  politics.  Part  of  their  theory,  however, 
is,  that  in  practical  questions  they  are  not  to  go  by  theory,  and 
the  consequence  is  that  while  they  sometimes  lay  down  general 
principles  in  which  communism  might  steal  a  shelter,  they 
control  these  principles  so  much  in  their  application  by  con- 
siderations of  expediency,  that  the  measures  they  end  in 
proposing  differ  little  from  such  as  commend  themselves  to 
the  common  sense  and  public  spirit  of  middle-class  Englishmen. 
Their  general  theory  had  been  taught  in  Germany  for 
twenty  years  before  it  was  forced  into  importance  by  the  policy 
it  suggested  and  the  controversies  it  excited  in  connection 
with  the  socialist  movement  which  began  in  1863.  Wilhelm 
Roscher,  the  lately  deceased  professor  of  economics  in  Leipzig, 
first  propounded  the  historical  method  in  his  "  Grundriss  zu 
Vorlesungen  iiber  die  Staatswirthschaft  nach  geschichtlicher 
Methode,"  published  in  1843,  though  it  deserves  to  be  noticed 
that  in  this  work  he  spoke  of  the  historical  method  as  being 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  201 

the  ordinary  inductive  method  of  scientific  economists,  and 
distinguished  it  from  the  idealistic  method  proceeding  by 
deduction  from  preconceived  ideas,  which  he  said  was  the 
method  of  the  socialists.  He  had  no  thought  as  yet  of  repre- 
senting his  method  as  diverging  from  that  of  his  predecessors,, 
even  in  detail,  much  less  as  being  essentially  different  in 
principle.  Then  the  late  Bruno  Hildebrand,  professor  of 
political  science  at  Jena,  in  his  work  on  the  "National 
Economy  of  the  Present  and  the  Future,"  published  in  1847, 
proclaimed  the  historical  method  as  the  harbinger  and  instru- 
ment of  a  new  era  in  the  science,  but  he  speaks  of  it  only  as  a 
restoration  of  the  method  of  diligent  observation  which  Adam 
Smith  practised,  but  which  his  disciples  deserted  for  pure 
abstractions.  In  1853,  a  more  elaborate  defence  and  exposi- 
tion of  the  historical  method  appeared  in  a  work  on  "  Political 
Economy  from  the  Standpoint  of  the  Historical  Method,"  by 
Carl  Gr.  A.  Knies,  professor  of  national  economics  at  Heidelberg. 
But  it  was  never  dreamt  that  the  ideas  broached  in  these 
works  had  spread  beyond  the  few  solitary  thinkers  who  issued 
them.  The  Free  Traders  were  still  seen  ruling  everything  in 
the  high  places  of  the  land  in  the  name  of  political  economy, 
and  they  were  everywhere  apparently  accepted  as  authorized 
interpreters  of  the  mysteries  of  that,  to  the  ordinary  public, 
somewhat  occult  science.  They  preached  the  freedom  of 
exchange  like  a  religion  which  contained  at  once  all  they 
were  required  to  believe  in  economic  matters,  and  all  they  were 
required  to  do.  There  was  ground  for  Lassalle's  well-known 
taunt :  "  Get  a  starling,  Herr  Schultze,  teach  it  to  pronounce 
the  word  '  exchange,'  '  exchange,'  '  exchange,'  and  you  have 
produced  a  very  good  modern  economist."  The  German 
Manchester  Party  certainly  gave  to  the  principle  of  laissez- 
fair€j  lamez-aller,  a  much  more  unconditional  and  universal 
application  than  any  party  in  this  country  thought  of  accord- 
ing to  it.  They  looked  on  it  as  a  kind  of  orthodoxy  which  it 
had  come  to  be  almost  impious  to  challenge.  It  had  been 
hallowed  by  the  consensus  of  the  primitive  fathers  of  the 
science,  and  it  seemed  now  to  be  confirmed  beyond  question 
experimentally  by  the  success  of  the  practical  legislation  in 
which  it  had  been  exemplified  during  the  previous  quarter  of 


202  Contemporary  Socialism. 

a  century.  The  adherents  of  the  new  school  never  raised  a 
murmur  against  all  this  up  till  the  eventful  time  of  the 
socialist  agitation  and  the  formation  of  the  new  German  Empire, 
and  the  reason  is  very  plain.  On  the  economic  questions 
■which  came  up  before  that  period,  they  were  entirely  at  one 
with  the  Free  Traders,  and  gave  a  hearty  support  to  their 
energetic  lead.  They  were,  for  example,  as  strenuously 
opposed  to  protective  duties  and  to  restrictions  upon  liberty 
of  migration,  settlement,  and  trading,  as  Manchester  itself. 
But  with  the  socialist  agitation  of  1863,  a  new  class  of  econo- 
mic questions  came  to  the  front — questions  respecting  the 
condition  of  the  working  classes,  the  relations  of  capital  and 
labour,  the  distribution  of  national  wealth,  and  the  like — and 
on  these  new  questions  they  could  not  join  the  Free  Traders 
in  saying  "  Hands  off!"  They  did  not  believe  with  the  Man- 
chester school  that  the  existing  distribution  of  wealth  was  tlie 
best  of  all  possible  distributions,  because  it  was  the  distribu- 
tion which  Nature  herself  produced.  They  thought,  on  the 
contrary,  that  Nature  had  little  to  do  with  the  matter ;  but 
even  if  it  had  more,  there  was  only  too  good  cause  for  applying 
strong  corrections  by  art.  They  said  it  was  vain  for  the  Man- 
chester party  to  deny  that  a  social  question  existed,  and  to 
maintain  that  the  working  classes  were  as  well  off  as  it  was 
practical  for  economic  arrangements  to  make  them.  They 
declared  there  was  much  truth  in  the  charges  which  socialists 
were  bringing  against  the  existing  order  of  things,  and  that 
there  was  a  decided  call  upon  all  the  powers  of  society,  and, 
among  others,  especially  upon  the  State,  to  intervene  with 
some  remedial  measures.  A  good  opportunity  for  concerted 
and  successful  action  seemed  to  be  afforded  when  the  German 
Empire  was  established,  and  this  led  to  the  convening  of  the 
Eisenach  Congress  in  1872,  and  the  organization  of  the  Society 
for  Social  Politics  in  the  following  year. 

Men  of  all  shades  of  opinion  were  invited  to  that  Congress, 
provided  they  agreed  on  two  points,  which  were  expressly 
mentioned  in  the  invitation :  1st,  in  entertaining  an  earnest 
sense  of  the  gravity  of  the  social  crisis  which  existed  ;  and  2nd, 
in  renouncing  the  principle  of  laissez-faire  and  all  its  works. 
The  Congress  was  attended  by  160  members,  including  many 


TJie  Socialists  of  the  Chair,  203 

leading  politicians  and  most  of  the  professors  of  political 
economy  at  the  Universities.  Eoscher,  Knies,  and  Hildebrand 
were  there,  with  their  j-ounger  disciples  Schmoller,  professor 
at  Strasburg  and  author  of  the  "  History  of  the  Small  Indus- 
tries "  ;  Lujo  Brentano,  professor  at  Breslau,  well  known  in 
this  country  by  his  book  on  "  English  Gilds  "  and  his  larger 
work  on  "  English  Trade  Unions";  Professors  A.  Wagner  of 
Berlin  and  SchOnberg  of  Tubingen.  Then  there  were  men 
like  Max  Hirsch  and  Duncker  the  publisher,  both  members  of 
the  Imperial  Diet,  and  the  founders  of  the  Hirsch-Duncker 
Trade  Unions ;  Dr.  Engel,  director  of  the  statistical  bureau 
at  Berlin ;  Professor  von  Holtzendorflf,  the  criminal  jurist ; 
and  Professor  Gneist,  historian  of  the  English  Constitu- 
tion, who  was  chosen  to  preside.  After  an  opening  address 
by  Schmoller,  three  papers  were  read  and  amply  discussed, 
one  on  Factory  Legislation  by  Brentano,  a  second  on  trade 
Unions  and  Strikes  by  Schmoller,  and  a  third  on  Labourers' 
Dwellings  by  Engel.  This  Congress  first  gave  the  German 
public  an  idea  of  the  strength  of  the  new  movement ;  and  the 
Free  Trade  party  were  completely,  and  somewhat  bitterly, 
disenchanted,  when  they  found  themselves  deserted,  not  as 
they  fancied  merely  by  a  few  effusive  young  men,  but  by 
almost  every  economist  of  established,  reputation  in  the 
country.  A  sharj)  controversy  ensued.  The  newspapers,  with 
scarcely  an  exception,  attacked  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair 
tooth  and  nail,  and  leading  members  of  the  Manchester  party, 
such  as  Treitschke  the  historian,  Bamberger  the  Liberal  poli- 
tician, and  others,  rushed  eagerly  into  the  fray.  They  were 
met  with  spirit  by  Schmoller,  Held,  Von  Scheel,  Brentano, 
and  other  spokesmen  of  the  Eisenach  position,  and  one  result 
of  the  polemic  is,  that  some  of  the  misunderstandings  which 
naturally  enough  clouded  that  position  at  the  beginning  have 
been  cleared  away,  and  it  is  now  admitted  by  both  sides  that 
they  are  really  much  nearer  one  another  than  either  at  first 
supposed.  The  Socialists  of  the  Chair  did  not  confine  their 
labours  to  controversial  pamphlets.  They  published  news- 
papers, periodicals,  elaborate  works  of  economic  investiga- 
tion ;  they  held  meetings,  promoted  trade  unions,  insurance 
societies,  savings  banks ;    they  brought  the  hours  of  labour. 


204  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  workmen's  houses,  the  effects  of  speculation  and  crises,  dl 
within  the  sphere  of  legislative  consideration.  The  modera- 
tion of  their  proposals  of  change  has  conciliated  to  a  great 
extent  their  Manchester  opponents.  Even  Oppenheim,  the 
inventor  of  their  nickname,  laid  aside  his  scoffing,  and 
seconded  some  of  their  measures  energetically.  Indeed,  their 
chief  adversaries  are  now  the  socialists,  who  cannot  forgive 
them  for  going  one  mile  with  them  and  yet  refusing  to  go 
twain — for  adopting  their  diagnosis  and  yet  rejecting  their 
prescription.  Brentano,  who  is  one  of  the  most  moderate,  as 
well  as  one  of  the  ablest  of  them,  takes  nearly  as  grave  a  view 
of  the  state  of  modern  industrial  society  as  the  socialists  them- 
selves do ;  and  he  says  that  if  the  evils  from  which  it  suffers 
could  not  be  removed  otherwise,  it  would  be  impossible  to 
avoid  much  longer  a  socialistic  experiment.  But  then  he 
maintains  that  they  can  be  removed  otherwise,  and  one  of  the 
chief  motives  of  himself  and  his  allies  in  their  practical  work 
is  to  put  an  end  to  socialistic  agitation  by  curing  the  ills 
which  have  excited  it. 

The  key  to  the  position  of  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair  lies 
in  their  historical  method.  This  method  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  question  sometimes  discussed  whether  the  proper 
method  of  political  economy  is  the  inductive  or  the  deductive. 
On  that  question  the  historical  school  of  economists  are  entirely 
agreed  with  the  classical  school.  Eoscher,  for  example,  adopts 
Mill's  description  of  political  economy  as  a  concrete  deductive 
science,  whose  d.  priori  conclusions,  based  on  laws  of  human 
nature,  must  be  tested  by  experience,  and  says  that  an 
economic  fact  can  be  said  to  have  received  a  scientific  ex- 
planation only  when  its  inductive  and  deductive  explanations 
have  met  and  agreed.  He  makes,  indeed,  two  qualifying 
remarks.  One  is,  that  it  ought  to  be  remembered  that  even 
the  deductive  explanation  is  based  on  observation,  on  the  self- 
observation  of  the  person  who  offers  it.  This  will  be  admitted 
by  all.  The  other  is,  that  every  explanation  is  only  provi- 
sional, and  liable  to  be  superseded  in  the  course  of  the  pro- 
gress of  knowledge,  and  of  the  historical  growth  of  social  and 
economic  structure.  This  will  also  be  admitted,  and  it  is  no 
peculiarity  of  political  economy.     There  is  no  science  whose 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  205 

conclusions  are  not  modified  by  tlie  advance  of  knowledge ; 
and  there  are  many  sciences  besides  political  economy  whose 
phenomena  change  their  type  in  lapse  of  time.  Roscher's 
proviso,  therefore,  amounts  to  nothing  more  than  a  caution 
to  economic  investigators  to  build  their  explanations  scrupu- 
lously on  the  facts,  the  whole  facts,  and  nothing  but  the 
facts,  and  to  be  specially  on  their  guard  against  applying  to 
the  circumstances  of  one  period  or  nation  explanations  and 
recommendations  which  are  only  just  regarding  another.  The 
same  disease  may  have  different  symptoms  in  a  cliild  from 
what  it  has  in  a  man,  and  a  somewhat  different  type  at  the 
present  day  from  what  it  had  some  centuries  ago ;  and  it  may 
therefore  require  a  quite  different  treatment.  That  is  a  very 
sound  principle  and  a  very  self-evident  one,  and  it  contains 
the  whole  essence  of  the  historical  method,  which,  so  far  as  it 
is  a  method  of  investigation  at  all,  is  simply  that  of  other 
economists  applied  under  a  more  dominating  sense  of  the  com- 
plexity and  diversity  of  the  phenomena  which  are  subjected 
to  it.  There  is  consequently  with  the  historical  school  more 
rigour  of  observation  and  less  rigour  of  theory,  and  this  pecu- 
liarity leads  to  practical  results  of  considerable  importance, 
but  it  has  no  just  pretensions  to  assume  the  dignity  of  a  new 
economic  method,  and  it  is  made  to  appear  much  bigger  than 
it  is  by  looming  through  the  scholastic  distinctions  in  which 
it  is  usually  set  forth. 

The  historical  school  sometimes  call  their  method  the  realhtic 
and  ethical  method,  to  distinguish  it  from  what  they  are  pleased 
to  term  the  idealistic,  and  selfish  or  materialistic  method  of 
the  earlier  economists.  They  are  realists  because  they  can- 
not agree  with  the  majority  of  economists  who  have  gone 
before  them  in  believing  there  is  one,  and  only  one,  ideal  of 
the  best  economic  system.  There  are,  says  Roscher,  as  many 
different  ideals  as  there  are  different  types  of  peoples,  and  he 
completely  casts  aside  the  notion,  which  had  generally  pre- 
vailed before  him,  that  there  is  a  single  normal  system  of 
economic  arrangements,  which  is  built  on  the  natural  laws 
of  economic  life,  and  to  which  all  nations  may  at  all  times 
with  advantage  conform.  It  is  against  this  notion  that  the 
historical  school  has  revolted  with  so  much  energy  that  they 


2o6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

wish  to  make  their  opposition  to  it  the  flag  and  symbol  of  a 
schism.  They  deny  that  there  are  any  natural  laws  in  political 
economy ;  they  deny  that  there  is  any  economic  solution 
absolutely  valid,  or  capable  of  answering  in  one  economic 
situation  because  it  has  answered  in  another.  Roscher,  Knies, 
and  the  older  members  of  the  school  make  most  of  the  latter 
point ;  but  Hildebrand,  Schonberg,  Schmoller,  Brentano,  and 
the  younger  spirits  among  them,  direct  against  the  former 
some  of  their  keenest  attacks.  They  declare  it  to  be  a  survival 
from  the  exploded  metaphysics  of  the  much-abused  Aufkldrung 
of  last  century.  They  argue  that  just  as  the  economists  of 
that  period  took  self-interest  to  be  the  only  economic  motive, 
because  the  then  dominant  psychology — that  of  the  selfish 
or  sensual  school — represented  it  as  the  only  real  motive  of 
human  action,  of  which  the  other  motives  were  merely  modi- 
fications ;  so  did  they  come  to  count  the  reciprocal  action  and 
reaction  of  the  self-interest  of  different  individuals  to  be  a 
system  of  natural  forces,  working  according  to  natural  laws, 
because  they  found  the  whole  intellectual  air  they  breathed 
at  the  time  filled  with  the  idea  that  all  error  in  poetry,  art, 
ethics,  and  therefore  also  economics,  had  come  through  de- 
parting from  nature,  and  that  the  true  course  in  everything 
lay  in  giving  the  supremacy  to  the  nature  of  things.  We 
need  not  stop  to  discuss  this  historical  question  as  to  the  origin 
of  the  idea ;  it  is  enough  here  to  say  that  the  Socialists  of 
the  Chair  maintain  that  in  economic  affairs  it  is  impossible 
to  make  any  such  distinction  between  what  is  natural  and 
what  is  not  so.  Everything  results  from  nature,  and  every- 
thing results  from  positive  institution  too.  There  is  in 
economics  either  no  nature  at  all,  or  there  is  nothing  else. 
Human  will  effects  or  affects  all ;  and  human  will  is  itself 
influenced,  of  course,  by  human  nature  and  human  condition. 
Roscher  says  that  it  is  a  mistake  to  speak  of  industry  being 
forced  into  "  unnatural  "  courses  by  priests  or  tyrants,  for  the 
priests  and  tyrants  are  part  and  parcel  of  the  people  them- 
selves, deriving  all  theit  resources  from  the  people,  and  in  no 
respect  Archimedeses  standing  outside  of  their  own  world. 
The  action  of  the  State  in  economic  affairs  is  just  as  natural 
as  the  action  of  the  farmer  or   the    manufacturer;    and   the 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  207 

latter  is  as  much  matter  of  positive  institution  as  the  former. 
But  while  Roscher  condemns  this  distinction,  he  does  not  go 
the  length  his  disciples  have  gone,  and  reject  the  whole  idea 
of  natural  law  in  the  sphere  of  political  economy.  On  the 
contrary,  he  actually  makes  use  of  the  expression,  "  the  natural 
laws  of  political  economy,"  and  asserts  that,  when  they  are 
once  sufficiently  known,  all  that  is  then  needed  to  guide 
economic  politics  is  to  obtain  exact  and  reliable  statistics 
of  the  situation  to  which  they  are  to  be  applied.  Now  that 
statement  is  exactly  the  position  of  the  classical  school  on  the 
subject.  Economic  politics  is,  of  course,  like  all  other  politics, 
an  affair  of  times  and  nations ;  but  economic  science  belongs 
to  mankind,  and  contains  principles  which  may  be  accurately 
enough  termed,  as  Roscher  terms  them,  natural  laws,  and 
which  may  be  applied,  as  he  would  apply  them,  to  the 
improvement  of  particular  economic  situations,  on  condition 
that  sufficiently  complete  and  correct  statistics  are  obtained 
beforehand  of  the  whole  actual  circumstances.  Economic 
laws  are,  of  course,  of  the  nature  of  ethical  laws,  and  not  of 
physical ;  but  they  are  none  the  less  on  that  account  natural 
laws,  and  the  polemic  instituted  by  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair 
to  expel  the  notion  of  natural  law  from  the  entire  territory  of 
political  economy  is  unjustifiable.  Phenomena  which  are 
the  result  of  human  action  will  always  exhibit  regularities 
while  human  character  remains  the  same  ;  and,  moreover,  they 
often  exhibit  undesigned  regularities  which,  not  being  imposed 
upon  them  by  man,  must  be  imposed  upon  them  by  Nature. 
While,  therefore,  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair  have  made  a 
certain  point  against  the  older  economists  by  showing  the 
futility  and  mischief  of  distinguishing  between  what  is  natural 
in  economics  and  what  is  not,  they  have  erred  in  seeking 
to  convert  that  point  into  an  argument  against  the  validity 
of  economic  principles  and  the  existence  of  economic  laws. 
At  the  same  time  their  position  constitutes  a  wholesome  pro- 
test against  the  tendency  to  exaggerate  the  completeness  or 
finality  of  current  doctrines,  and  gives  economic  investigation 
a  beneficial  direction  by  setting  it  upon  a  more  thorough  and 
all-sided  observation  of  facts. 

But  when  they  complain  of  the  earlier  economists  being  so 


2o8  Contetnporary  Socialism. 

wedded  to  abstractions,  the  fault  they  chiefly  mean  to  censure 
is  the  habit  of  solving  practical  economic  problems  by  the 
unconditional  application  of  certain  abstract  principles.  It  is 
the  "  absolutism  of  solutions "  they  condemn.  They  think 
economists  were  used  to  act  like  doctors  who  had  learnt  the 
principles  of  medicine  by  rote  and  applied  them  without  the 
least  discrimination  of  the  peculiarities  of  individual  constitu- 
tions. "With  them  the  individual  peculiarities  are  everything, 
and  the  principles  are  too  much  thrown  into  the  shade.  Eco- 
nomic phenomena,  they  hold,  constitute  only  one  phase  of 
the  general  life  of  the  particular  nations  in  which  they  appear. 
They  are  part  and  parcel  of  a  special  concrete  social  organism. 
They  are  influenced — they  are  to  a  great  extent  made  what 
they  are — by  the  whole  ethos  of  the  people  they  pertain  to, 
by  their  national  character,  their  state  of  culture,  their  habits, 
customs,  laws.  Economic  problems  are  consequently  always 
of  necessity  problems  of  the  time,  and  can  only  be  solved  for 
the  period  that  raises  them.  Theii  very  nature  alters  under 
other  skies  and  in  other  ages.  They  neither  appear  every- 
where in  the  same  shape,  nor  admit  everywhere  of  the  same 
answer.  They  must  therefore  be  treated  historically  and 
empirically,  and  political  economy  is  always  an  affair  for  the 
nation  and  never  for  the  world.  The  historical  school  inveigh 
against  the  cosmopolifanism  of  the  current  economic  theories, 
and  declare  warmly  in  favour  of  nationalism ;  according  to 
which  every  nation  has  its  own  political  economy  just  as  it 
has  its  own  constitution  and  its  own  character.  Now  here 
they  are  right  in  what  they  affirm,  wrong  in  what  they  deny. 
They  are  right  in  affirming  that  economic  politics  is  national, 
wrong  in  denying  that  economic  science  is  cosmopolitan.  In 
German  the  word  economy  denotes  the  concrete  industrial 
system  as  well  as  the  abstract  science  of  industrial  systems, 
and  one  therefore  readily  falls  into  the  error  of  applying  to 
the  latter  what  is  only  true  of  the  former.  There  may  be 
general  principles  of  engineering,  though  every  particular  pro- 
ject can  only  be  successfully  accomplished  by  a  close  regard  to 
its  particular  conditions.  In  claiming  a  cosmopolitan  validity 
for  their  principles,  economists  do  not  overlook  their  essential 
relativity.      Ou  the   contrary,    they   describe   their  economic 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  209 

laws  as  being  in  reality  nothing  more  than  tendencies,  which 
are  not  even  strictly  true  as  scientific  explanations,  and  are 
never  for  a  moment  contemplated  as  unconditional  solutions 
for  practical  situations.  Moreover  E,oscher,  in  defining  his 
task  as  an  economist,  virtually  takes  up  the  cosmopolitan 
standpoint  and  virtually  rejects  the  national.  He  says  a 
political  economist  has  to  explain  what  is  or  has  been,  and 
not  to  show  what  ought  to  be ;  he  quotes  the  saying  of 
Dunoyer,  Je  li' impose  rien,  je  ne  propose  meme  rien,  f  expose; 
and  states  that  what  he  has  to  do  is  to  unfold  the  anatomy  and 
physiology  of  social  and  national  economy.  He  is  a  scientific 
man,  and  not  an  economic  politician,  and  naturally  assumes 
the  position  of  science,  which  is  cosmopolitan,  and  not  that 
of  politics,  which  is  national  and  even  opportunist. 

I  pass  now  to  a  perhaps  more  important  point,  from  which 
it  will  be  seen  that  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair  are  far  from 
thinking  that  political  economy  has  nothing  to  do  with  what 
ought  to  be.  Next  to  the  realistic  school,  the  name  they  prefer 
to  describe  themselves  by  is  the  ethical  school.  By  this  they 
mean  two  things,  and  some  of  them  lay  the  stress  on  the  one 
and  some  on  the  other.  They  mean,  first,  to  repudiate  the 
idea  of  self-interest  being  the  sole  economic  motive  or  force. 
They  do  not  deny  it  to  be  a  leading  motive  in  industrial 
transactions,  and  they  do  not,  like  some  of  the  earlier  socialists, 
aim  at  its  extinction  or  replacement  by  a  social  or  generous 
principle  of  action.  But  they  maintain  that  the  course  of 
industry  never  has  been  and  never  will  be  left  to  its  guidance 
alone.  Many  other  social  forces,  national  character,  ideas, 
customs — the  whole  inherited  ethos  of  the  people — individual 
peculiarities,  love  of  power,  sense  of  fair  dealing,  public  opinion, 
conscience,  local  ties,  family  connections,  civil  legislation — all 
exercise  upon  industrial  affairs  as  real  an  influence  as  personal 
interest,  and,  furthermore,  they  exercise  an  influence  of  pre- 
cisely the  same  kind.  They  all  operate  ethically,  through 
human  will,  judgment,  motives,  and  in  this  respect  one  of 
them  has  no  advantage  over  another.  It  cannot  be  said, 
except  in  a  very  limited  sense,  that  self-interest  is  an  essential 
and  abiding  economic  force  and  the  others  onl}^  accidental 
and   passing.      For   while   customs   perish,    custom   remains ; 

s 


2IO  Conte7nporary  Socialism. 

opinions  come  and  go,  but  opinion  abides  ;  and  thougb  any 
particular  act  of  the  State's  intervention  may  be  abolished, 
State  intervention  itself  cannot  possibly  be  dispensed  with.  It 
is  all  a  matter  of  more  or  less,  of  here  or  there.  The  State  is 
not  the  intruder  in  industry  it  is  represented  to  be.  It  is 
planted  in  the  heart  of  the  industrial  organism  from  the  begin- 
ning, and  constitutes  in  fact  part  of  the  nature  of  things  from 
which  it  is  sought  to  distinguish  it.  It  is  not  unnatural  for 
us  to  wear  clothes  because  we  happen  to  be  born  naked,  for 
Nature  has  given  us  a  principle  which  guides  us  to  adapt  our 
dress  to  our  climate  and  circumstances.  Reason  is  as  natural 
as  passion,  and  the  economists  who  repel  the  State's  intrusion 
nnd  think  they  are  thus  leaving  industry  to  take  its  natural 
course,  commit  the  same  absurdity  as  the  moralist  who  re- 
commends men  to  live  according  to  Nature,  and  explains  living 
according  to  Nature  to  mean  the  gratification  as  much  as 
possible  of  his  desires,  and  his  abandonment  as  much  as  possible 
of  rational  and,  as  he  conceives,  artificial  plan.  The  State 
cannot  observe  an  absolute  neutrality  if  it  would.  Non-inter- 
vention is  only  a  particular  kind  of  intervention.  There  must 
be  laws  of  property,  succession,  and  the  like,  and  the  influence 
of  these  spreads  over  the  whole  industrial  system,  and  affects 
both  the  character  of  its  production  and  the  incidence  of  its 
distribution  of  wealth. 

But,  second,  by  calling  their  method  the  efJiical  method,  the 
historical  school  desire  to  repudiate  the  idea  that  in  dealing 
with  economic  phenomena  they  are  dealing  with  things 
which  are  morally  indifferent,  like  the  phenomena  of  physics, 
and  that  science  has  nothing  to  do  with  them  but  to  explain 
them.  They  have  certainly  reason  to  complain  that  the  opera- 
tion of  the  laws  of  political  economy  is  sometimes  represented 
as  if  it  were  morally  as  neutral  as  the  operation  of  the  law  of 
gravitation,  and  it  is  in  this  conception  that  they  think  the 
materialism  of  the  dominant  economic  school  to  be  practically 
most  offensively  exhibited.  Economic  phenomena  are  not 
morally  indifferent ;  they  are  ethical  in  their  very  being,  and 
ought  to  be  treated  as  such.  Take,  for  example,  the  labour 
contract.  To  treat  it  as  a  simple  exchange  between  equals  is 
absurd.     The  labourer  must  sell  his  labour  or  starve,  and  may 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  2 1 1 

be  obliged  to  take  such  terms  for  it  as  leave  him  without  the 
means  of  enjoying  the  rights  which  society  awards  him,  and 
discharging  the  duties  which  society  claims  from  him.  Look 
on  him  as  a  ware,  if  you  will,  but  remember  he  is  a  ware  that 
has  life,  that  has  connections,  responsibilites,  expectations, 
domestic,  social,  political.  To  get  his  bread  he  might  sell  his 
freedom,  but  society  will  not  permit  him ;  he  may  sell  his 
health,  he  may  sell  his  character,  for  society  permits  that ;  he 
may  go  to  sea  in  rotten  ships,  and  be  sent  to  work  in  un- 
wholesome workshops ;  he  may  be  herded  in  farm  bothies 
where  the  commonest  decencies  of  life  cannot  be  observed ;  and 
he  may  suck  the  strength  out  of  posterity  by  putting  his 
children  to  premature  toil  to  eke  out  his  precarious  living. 
Transactions  which  have  such  direct  bearings  on  freedom,  on 
health,  on  morals,  on  the  permanent  well-being  of  the  nation, 
can  never  be  morally  indifferent.  They  are  necessarily  within 
the  sphere  of  ends  and  ideals.  Their  ethical  side  is  one  of  their 
most  important  ones,  and  the  science  that  deals  with  them  is 
therefore  ethical.  For  the  same  reason  they  come  within  the 
province  of  the  State,  which  is  the  normal  guardian  of  the 
general  and  permanent  interests,  moral  and  economic,  of  the 
community.  The  State  does  not  stand  to  industry  like  a 
watchman  who  guards  from  the  outside  property  in  which  he 
has  himself  no  personal  concern.  It  has  a  positive  industrial 
office.  It  is,  says  Schmoller,  the  great  educational  institute  of 
the  human  race,  and  there  is  no  sense  in  suspiciously  seeking 
to  reduce  its  action  in  industrial  affairs  to  a  minimum.  His 
theory  of  the  State  is  that  of  the  Cultur-Staat,  in  distinction 
from  the  Polizei-Staat,  and  the  Eechfs-Staat  The  State  can  no 
longer  be  regarded  as  merely  an  omnipotent  instrument  for  the 
maintenance  of  tranquillity  and  order  in  the  name  of  Heaven  ; 
nor  even  as  a  constitutional  organ  of  the  collective  national 
authority  for  securing  to  all  individuals  and  classes  in  the 
nation,  without  exception,  the  rights  and  privileges  which  they 
are  legally  recognised  to  possess ;  but  it  must  be  henceforth 
looked  upon  as  a  positive  agency  for  the  spread  of  universal 
culture  within  its  geographical  territory. 

With  these  views,  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair  could  not  fail 
to  take  an  active  concern  with  the  class  of  topics  thrown  up  by 


212  Contemporary  Socialis^n. 

the  socialist  movement,  and  exciting  still  so  much  attention  in 
Germany  under  the  name  of  the  social  question.  They  neither 
state  that  question  nor  answer  it  like  the  socialists,  but  their 
first  offence,  and  the  fountain  of  all  their  subsequent  offending, 
in  the  judgment  of  their  Manchester  antagonists,  consisted  in 
their  acknowledgment  that  there  was  a  social  question  at  all. 
Not  that  the  ]\Ianchester  party  denied  the  existence  of  evils  in 
the  present  state  of  industry,  but  they  looked  upon  these  evils 
as  resulting  from  obstructions  to  the  freedom  of  competition 
which  time,  and  time  alone,  would  eventually  remove,  and 
from  moral  causes  with  which  economists  had  no  proper 
business.  The  Socialists  of  the  Chair,  however,  could  not 
dismiss  their  responsibility  for  those  evils  so  easily.  They 
owned  at  once  that  a  social  crisis  had  arisen  or  was  near  at 
hand.  The  effect  of  the  general  adoption  of  the  large  system 
of  production  had  been  to  diminish  the  numbers  of  the  middle 
classes,  to  reduce  the  great  bulk  of  the  lower  classes  per- 
manently to  the  position  of  wage-labourers,  and  to  introduce 
some  grave  elements  of  peril  and  distress  into  the  condition  of 
the  wage-labourers  themselves.  They  are  doubtless  better  fed, 
better  lodged,  better  clad,  than  they  were  say  in  the  middle 
and  end  of  last  century,  when  not  one  in  a  hundred  of  them 
had  shoes  to  his  feet,  when  seven  out  of  eight  on  the  Continent 
were  still  bondsmen,  and  when  three  out  of  every  four  in 
England  had  to  eke  out  their  wages  by  parochial  relief.  But, 
in  spite  of  these  advantages,  their  life  has  now  less  hope  and 
less  security  than  it  had  then.  Industry  on  the  great  scale  has 
multiplied  the  vicissitudes  of  trade,  and  rendered  the  labourer 
much  more  liable  to  be  thrown  out  of  work.  It  has  diminished 
the  avenues  to  comparative  independence  and  dignity  which 
were  open  to  the  journeyman  under  the  regime  of  the  small 
industries.  And  while  thus  condemned  to  live  by  wages  alone 
all  his  days,  he  could  entertain  no  reasonable  hope — at  least 
before  the  formation  of  trade  unions — that  his  wages  could  be 
kept  up  within  reach  of  the  measure  of  his  wants,  as  these 
wants  were  being  progressively  expanded  by  the  general 
advance  of  culture.  Moreover,  the  twinge  of  the  case  lies  here, 
that  while  the  course  which  industrial  development  is  taking 
seems  to  be  banishing  hope  and  security  more  and  more  from 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  213 

the  labourer's  life,  the  progress  of  general  civilization  is  making 
these  benefits  more  and  more  imperatively  demanded.  The 
•working  classes  have  been  growing  steadily  in  the  scale  of 
moral  being.  They  have  acquired  complete  personal  freedom, 
legal  equality,  political  rights,  general  education,  a  class  con- 
sciousness ;  and  they  have  come  to  cherish  a  very  natural  and 
legitimate  aspiration  that  they  shall  go  on  progressively  sharing 
in  the  increasing  blessings  of  civilization.  Brentano  says  that 
modem  public  opinion  concedes  this  claim  of  the  working  man 
as  a  right  to  which  he  is  entitled,  but  that  modem  industrial 
conditions  have  been  unable  as  yet  to  secure  him  in  the 
possession  of  it ;  hence  the  Social  Question.  Now  some  persons 
may  be  ready  enough  to  admit  this  claim  as  a  thing  which  it 
is  eminently  desirable  to  see  realized,  who  will  yet  demur  to 
the  representation  of  it  as  a  right,  which  puts  society  under 
a  corresponding  obligation.  But  this  idea  is  a  peculiarity 
belonging  to  the  whole  way  of  thinking  of  the  Socialists  of  the 
Chair  upon  these  subjects.  Some  of  them  indeed  take  even 
higher  ground.  Schmoller,  for  example,  declares  that  the 
working  classes  suffer  positive  wrong  in  the  present  distribution 
of  national  wealth,  considered  frora  the  standpoint  of  distri- 
butive justice ;  but  his  associates  as  a  rule  do  not  agree  with 
him  in  applying  this  abstract  standard  to  the  case.  "Wagner 
also  stands  somewhat  out  of  the  ranks  of  his  fellows  by 
throwing  the  responsibility  of  the  existing  evils  directly  and 
definitely  upon  the  State.  According  to  his  view,  there  can 
never  be  anything  which  may  be  legitimately  called  a  Social 
Question,  unless  the  evils  complained  of  are  clearly  the  con- 
sequences of  existing  legislation,  but  he  holds  that  that  is  so  in 
the  present  case.  He  considers  that  a  mischievous  turn  has 
been  given  to  the  distribution  of  wealth  by  legalizing  indus- 
trial freedom  without  at  the  same  time  imposing  certain 
restrictions  upon  private  property,  the  rate  of  interest,  and  the 
speculations  of  the  Stock  Exchange.  The  State  has,  therefore, 
caused  the  Social  Question  ;  and  the  State  is  bound  to  settle  it. 
The  other  Socialists  of  the  Chair,  however,  do  not  bring  the 
obligation  so  dead  home  to  the  civil  authority  alone.  The  duty 
rests  on  society,  and,  of  course,  so  far  on  the  State  also,  which 
is  the  chief  organ  of  society ;  but  it  is  not  to  State-help  alone, 


214  Contemporary  Socialism, 

nor  to  self-help  alone,  that  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair  ask  work- 
ing men  to  look ;  but  it  is  to  what  they  term  the  self-help  of 
society.  Society  has  granted  to  the  labouring  classes  the 
rights  of  freedom  and  equality,  and  has,  therefore,  come  bound 
to  give  them,  as  far  as  it  legitimately  can,  the  amplest 
facilities  for  practically  enjoying  these  rights.  To  give  a  man 
an  estate  mortgaged  above  its  rental  is  only  to  mock  him  ;  to 
confer  the  status  of  freedom  upon  working  men  merely  to 
leave  them  overwhelmed  in  an  unequal  struggle  with  capital 
is  to  make  their  freedom  a  dead  letter.  Personal  and  civil 
independence  require,  as  their  indispensable  accompaniment, 
a  certain  measure  of  economic  independence  likewise,  and 
consequently  to  bestow  the  former  as  an  inalienable  right,  and 
yet  take  no  concern  to  make  the  latter  a  possibility,  is  only  to 
discharge  one-half  of  an  obligation  voluntarily  undertaken,  and 
to  deceive  expectations  reasonably  entertained.  No  doubt  this 
independence  is  a  thing  which  working  men  must  in  the  main 
win  for  themselves,  and  day  after  day,  by  labour,  by  provi- 
dence, by  association ;  but  it  is  nevertheless  an  important  point 
to  remember,  with  Brentano,  that  it  forms  an  essential  part  of 
an  ideal  which  society  has  already  acknowledged  to  be  legiti- 
mate, and  which  it  is  therefore  bound  to  second  every  effort  to 
realize.  The  Social  Question,  conceived  in  the  light  of  these 
considerations,  may  accordingly  be  said  to  arise  from  the  fact 
that  a  certain  material  or  economic  independence  has  become 
more  necessary  for  the  working  man,  and  less  possible.  It  is 
more  necessary,  because,  with  the  sanction  of  modern  opinion, 
he  has  awoke  to  a  new  sense  of  personal  dignity,  and  it  is  less 
possible,  in  consequence  of  circumstances  already  mentioned, 
attendant  upon  the  development  of  modern  industry.  It  is  not, 
as  Lord  Macaulay  maintained,  that  the  evils  of  man's  life  are 
the  same  now  as  formerly,  and  that  nothing  has  changed  but 
the  intelligence  which  has  become  conscious  of  them.  The 
new  time  has  brought  new  evils  and  less  right  or  disposition 
to  submit  to  them.  It  is  the  conflict  of  these  two  tendencies 
which,  in  the  thinking  of  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair,  constitutes 
the  social  crisis  of  the  present  day.  Some  of  them,  indeed, 
describe  it  in  somewhat  too  abstract  formulae,  which  exercise 
an  embarrassing  influence  on  their  speculations.     For  example, 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  215 

Von  Scheel  says  the  Social  Question  is  the  effect  of  the  felt 
contradiction  between  the  ideal  of  personal  freedom  and  equality 
which  hangs  before  the  present  age,  and  the  increasing  in- 
equality of  wealth  which  results  from  existing  economic 
arrangements ;  and  he  proposes  as  the  general  principle  of 
solution,  that  men  should  now  abandon  the  exclusive  devotion 
which  modern  Liberalism  has  paid  to  the  principle  of  freedom, 
and  substitute  in  its  room  an  adhesion  to  freedom  jAus  equality. 
But  then  equality  may  mean  a  great  many  different  things, 
and  Von  Scheel  leaves  us  with  no  precise  clue  to  the  particular 
scope  he  would  give  his  principle  in  its  application.  He 
certainly  seems  to  desire  more  than  a  mere  equality  of  right, 
and  to  aim  at  some  sort  or  degree  of  equality  of  fact,  but  what 
or  how  he  informs  us  not;  just  as  SchmoUer,  while  pro- 
pounding the  dogma  of  distributive  justice,  condemns  the 
communistic  principle  of  distribution  of  "wealth  as  being  a 
purely  animal  principle,  and  offers  us  no  other  incorporation  of 
his  dogma.  In  spite  of  their  antipathy  to  abstractions,  many 
of  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair  indulge  considerably  in  barren 
generalities,  which  could  serve  them  nothing  in  practice,  even 
if  they  did  not  make  it  a  point  to  square  their  practice  by  the 
historical  conditions  of  the  hour. 

Brentano  strikes  on  the  whole  the  most  practical  keynote, 
both  in  his  conception  of  what  the  social  question  is  and  of 
how  it  is  to  be  met.  "What  is  needed,  he  thinks,  very  much  is 
to  give  to  modern  industry  an  organization  as  suitable  to  it  as 
the  old  guilds  were  to  the  industry  of  earlier  times,  and  this  is 
to  be  done  in  great  part  by  adaptations  of  that  model.  He 
makes  comparatively  little  demand  on  the  power  of  the  State, 
while  of  course  agreeing  with  the  rest  of  his  school  in  the  lati- 
tude they  give  to  the  lawfulness  of  its  intervention  in  industrial 
matters.  He  would  ask  it  to  bestow  a  legal  status  on  trade 
unions  and  friendly  societies,  to  appoint  courts  of  conciliation, 
to  regulate  the  hours  of  labour,  to  institute  factory  inspection, 
and  to  take  action  of  some  sort  on  the  daily  more  urgent  sub- 
ject of  labourers'  dwellings.  But  the  elevation  of  the  labouring 
classes  must  be  wrought  mainly  by  their  own  well-guided  and 
long-continued  efforts,  and  the  first  step  is  gained  when  they 
have  resolved  earnestly  to  begin.     The  pith  of  the  problem 


2i6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

turns  on  the  matter  of  wages,  and,  so  far  at  any  rate,  it  lias 
already  been  solved  almost  as  well  as  is  practicable  by  the 
English  trade  unions,  which  have  proved  to  the  world  that 
they  are  always  able  to  convert  the  question  of  wages  from  the 
question  how  little  the  labourer  can  afford  to  take,  into  the 
question  how  much  the  employer  is  able  to  give — i.e.,  from  the 
minimum  to  the  maximum  which  the  state  of  the  market 
allows.  That  is,  of  course,  a  very  important  change,  and  it  is 
interesting  to  know  that  F.  A.  Lange,  the  able  and  distinguished 
historian  of  Materialism,  who  had  written  on  the  labour  ques- 
tion with  strong  socialist  sympathies,  stated  to  Brentano  that 
his  account  of  the  English  trade  unions  had  converted  him 
entirely  from  his  belief  that  a  socialistic  experiment  was  neces- 
sary. Brentano  admits  that  the  effect  of  trade  unions  is  partial 
only ;  that  they  really  divide  the  labouring  class  into  two 
different  strata — those  who  belong  to  the  trade  unions  being 
raised  to  a  higher  platform,  and  those  who  do  not  being  left  as 
they  were  in  the  gall  of  bitterness.  But  then,  he  observes, 
great  gain  has  been  made  when  at  least  a  large  section  of  the 
working  class  has  been  brought  more  securely  within  the  pale 
of  advancing  culture,  and  it  is  only  in  this  gradual  way — section 
by  section — that  the  elevation  of  the  whole  body  can  be  eventu- 
ally accomplished.  The  trade  union  has  imported  into  the  life 
of  the  working  man  something  of  the  element  of  hope  which  it 
wanted,  and  a  systematic  scheme  of  working-class  insurance  is 
now  needed  to  introduce  the  element  of  security.  Brentano 
has  published  an  excellent  little  work  on  that  subject ;  and 
here  again  he  asks  no  material  help  from  the  State.  The  work- 
ing class  must  insure  themselves  against  all  the  risks  of  their 
life  by  association,  just  as  they  must  keep  up  the  rate  of  their 
wages  by  association  ;  and  for  the  same  reasons — first,  because 
they  are  able  to  do  so  under  existing  economic  conditions, 
and  second,  because  it  is  only  so  the  end  can  be  gained  con- 
sistently with  the  modern  moral  conditions  of  their  life — i.e., 
with  the  maintenance  of  their  personal  freedom,  equahty,  and 
independence.  Brentano  thinks  that  the  sound  principle  of 
working-class  insurance  is  that  every  trade  union  ought  to  be- 
come the  insurance  society  for  its  trade,  because  every  trade 
has  its  own  special  risks  and  therefore  requires  its  own  insur- 


The  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  217 

ance  premium,  and  because  malingering,  feigned  sickness, 
claims  for  loss  of  employment  througli  personal  fault,  and  the 
like,  cannot  possibly  be  checked  except  by  the  fund  being  ad- 
ministered by  the  local  lodges  of  the  trade  to  which  the  sub- 
scribers belong.  The  insurance  fund  might  be  kept  separate 
from  the  other  funds  of  the  union,  but  he  sees  no  reason  why 
it  should  not  be  combined  with  them,  as  it  would  only  consti- 
tute a  new  obstacle  to  ill-considered  strikes,  and  as  striking  in 
itself  will,  he  expects,  in  course  of  time,  give  way  to  some  sys- 
tem of  arbitration.  Brentano  makes  no  suggestion  regarding 
the  mass  of  the  working  class  who  belong  to  no  trade  union. 
They  cannot  be  dealt  with  in  the  same  way,  or  so  effectively. 
But  this  is  quite  in  keeping  with  the  general  principle  of  the 
Socialists  of  the  Chair — in  which  they  differ  toto  ccelo  from  the 
socialists — that  society  is  not  to  be  ameliorated  by  rigidly 
applying  to  every  bit  of  it  the  same  plan,  but  only  by  a 
thousand  modifications  and  remedies  adapted  to  its  thousand 
varieties  of  circumstances  and  situations. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE    CHRISTIAN   SOCIALISTS. 

The  idea  that  a  radical  affinity  exists  between  Christianity  and 
socialism  in  their  general  aim,  in  their  essential  principles,  in 
their  pervading  spirit,  has  strong  attractions  for  a  certain  by 
no  means  inferior  order  of  mind,  and  we  find  it  frequently 
maintained  in  the  course  of  history  by  representatives  of  both 
systems.  Some  of  the  principal  socialists  of  the  earlier  part  of 
this  century  used  to  declare  that  socialism  was  only  Christi- 
anity more  logically  carried  out  and  more  faithfully  practised ; 
or,  at  any  rate,  that  socialism  would  be  an  idle  superfluity,  if 
ordinary  Christian  principles  were  really  to  be  acted  upon 
honestly  and  without  reserve.  St,  Simon  published  his  views 
under  the  title  of  the  "  Nouveau  Christianisme,"  and  asserted 
that  the  prevailing  forms  of  Christianity  were  one  gigantic 
heresy  j  that  both  the  Catholic  and  the  Protestant  Churches 
had  now  lost  their  power,  simply  because  they  had  neglected 
their  great  temporal  mission  of  raising  the  poor,  and  because 
their  clergy  had  given  themselves  up  to  barren  discussions  of 
theology,  and  remained  absolutely  ignorant  of  the  living  social 
questions  of  the  time ;  and  that  the  true  Christian  regime  which 
he  was  to  introduce  was  one  which  should  be  founded  on  the 
Christian  principle  that  all  men  are  brothers  ;  which  should  be 
governed  by  the  Christian  law,  "  Have  ye  love  one  to  another," 
and  in  which  all  the  forces  of  society  should  be  mainly  conse- 
crated to  the  amelioration  of  the  most  numerous  and  poorest 
class.  Cabet  was  not  less  explicit.  He  said  that  "  if  Christi- 
anity had  been  interpreted  and  applied  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus 
Christ,  if  it  were  rightfully  understood  and  faithfully  obeyed 
by  the  numerous  sections  of  Christians  who  are  really  filled 
with  a  sincere  piety,  and  need  only  to  know  the  truth  to  follow 
it,  then  Christianity  would  have  sufficed,  and  would  still  suffice, 


The  Christian  Socialists.  219 

to  establish  a  perfect  social  and  political  organization,  and  to 
deliver  mankind  from  all  its  ills," 

The  same  belief,  that  Christianity  is  essentially  socialistic, 
has  at  various  times  appeared  in  the  Church  itself.  The  social- 
ism of  the  only  other  period  in  modem  history  besides  our  own 
century,  in  which  socialistic  ideas  have  prevailed  to  any  con- 
siderable extent,  was,  in  fact,  a  direct  outcome  of  Christian  con- 
viction, and  was  realized  among  Christian  sects.  The  socialism 
of  the  Anabaptists  of  the  Reformation  epoch  was  certainly 
mingled  with  political  ideas  of  class  emancipation,  and  contri- 
buted to  stir  the  insurrection  of  the  German  peasantry ;  but 
its  real  origin  lay  in  the  religious  fervour  which  was  abroad  at 
the  time,  and  which  buoyed  sanguine  and  mystical  minds  on 
dreams  of  a  reign  of  God.  When  men  feel  a  new  and  better 
power  arising  strongly  about  them,  they  are  forward  to  throw 
themselves  into  harmony  with  it,  and  there  were  people, 
touched  by  the  religious  revival  of  the  Reformation,  who 
sought  to  anticipate  its  progress,  as  it  were,  by  living  together 
like  brothers.  Fraternity  is  undoubtedly  a  Christian  idea, 
come  into  the  world  with  Christ,  spread  abroad  in  it  by  Chris- 
tian agencies,  and  belonging  to  the  ideal  that  hovers  perpe- 
tually over  Christian  society.  It  has  already  produced  social 
changes  of  immense  consequence,  and  has  force  in  it,  we  can- 
not doubt,  to  produce  many  more  in  the  future ;  and  it  is 
therefore  in  nowise  strange  that  in  times  of  religious  zeal  or 
of  social  distress,  this  idea  of  fraternity  should  appeal  to  some 
eager  natures  with  so  urgent  an  authority,  both  of  condemna- 
tion and  of  promise,  that  they  would  fain  take  it  at  once  by 
force  and  make  it  king. 

The  socialism  of  the  present  day  is  not  of  a  religious  origin. 
On  the  contrary,  there  is  some  truth  in  the  remark  of  a  distin- 
guished economist,  M.  Paul  Leroy-Beaulieu,  that  the  prevalence 
of  socialistic  ideas  is  largely  due  to  the  decline  of  religious 
faith  among  the  working  classes.  If  there  is  only  the  one  life, 
they  feel  they  must  realize  their  ideal  here  and  realize  it  quickly, 
or  they  will  never  realize  it  at  all.  However  this  may  be,  the 
fact  is  certain  that  most  contemporary  socialists  have  turned 
their  backs  on  religion.  They  sometimes  speak  of  it  with  a 
kind  of  suppressed  and  settled  bitterness  as  of  a  friend  that  has 


220  Conteinporary  Socialism. 

proved  faithless  :  "  We  are  not  atheists :  we  have  simply  done 
with  God."  They  seem  to  feel  that  if  there  be  a  God,  He  is, 
at  any  rate,  no  God  for  them,  that  He  is  the  God  of  the  rich, 
and  cares  nothing  for  the  poor,  and  there  is  a  vein  of  most 
touching,  though  most  illogical,  reproach  in  their  hostility  to- 
wards a  Deity  whom  they  yet  declare  to  have  no  existence. 
They  say  in  their  heart.  There  is  no  God,  or  only  one  whom 
they  decline  to  serve,  for  He  is  no  friend  to  the  labouring  man, 
and  has  never  all  these  centuries  done  anything  for  him.  This 
atheism  seems  as  much  matter  of  class  antipathy  as  of  free- 
thought  ;  and  the  semi-political  element  in  it  lends  a  peculiar 
bitterness  to  the  socialistic  attacks  on  religion  and  the  Church, 
which  are  regarded  as  main  pillars  of  the  established  order  of 
things,  and  irreconcileable  obstructives  to  all  socialist  dreams 
The  Church  has,  therefore,  as  a  rule  looked  upon  the  whole 
movement  with  a  natural  and  justifiable  suspicion,  and  has, 
for  the  most  part,  dispensed  to  it  an  indiscriminate  condemna- 
tion. Some  Churchmen,  however,  scruple  to  assume  this  atti- 
tude ;  they  recognise  a  soul  of  good  in  the  agitation,  if  it  could 
be  stripped  of  the  revolutionary  and  atheistic  elements  of  its 
propaganda,  which  they  hold  to  be,  after  all,  merely  accidental 
accompaniments  of  the  system,  at  once  foreign  to  its  essence 
and  pernicious  to  its  purpose.  It  is  in  substance,  they  say,  an 
economic  movement,  both  in  its  origin  and  its  objects,  and 
so  far  as  it  stands  on  this  ground  they  have  no  hesitation  in 
declaring  that  in  their  judgment  there  is  a  great  deal  more 
Christianity  in  socialism  than  in  the  existing  industrial  regime. 
Those  who  take  this  view,  generally  find  a  strong  bond  of 
union  with  socialists  in  their  common  revolt  against  the  mam- 
monism  of  the  church-going  middle  classes,  and  against  some 
current  economic  doctrines,  which  seem  almost  to  canonize  what 
they  count  the  heartless  and  un-Christian  principles  of  self- 
interest  and  competition. 

Such,  for  example,  was  the  position  maintained  by  the 
Christian  Socialists  of  England  thirty  years  ago — a  band  of 
noble  patriotic  men  who  strove  hard,  by  word  and  deed,  to 
bring  all  classes  of  the  community  to  a  knowledge  of  their 
duties,  as  well  as  their  interests,  and  to  supersede,  as  far  as 
might  be,  the  system  of  unlimited  competition  by  a  system  of 


The  Christian  Socialists.  221 

universal  co-operation.  They  inveighed  against  the  Manchester 
creed,  then  in  the  flush  of  success,  as  if  it  were  the  special 
Antichrist  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Lassalle  himself  has 
not  used  harder,  more  passionate,  or  more  unjust  words  of 
it.  Maurice  said  he  dreaded  above  everything  "  that  horrible 
catastrophe  of  a  Manchester  ascendancy,  which  I  believe 
in  my  soul  would  be  fatal  to  intellect,  morality,  and  free- 
dom "  ;  and  Kingsley  declared  that  "  of  all  narrow,  conceited, 
hypocritical,  anarchic,  and  atheistic  schemes  of  the  uni- 
verse, the  Cobden  and  Bright  one  was  exactly  the  worst." 
They  agreed  entirely  with  the  socialists  in  condemning  the 
reigning  industrial  system:  it  was  founded  on  unrighteous- 
ness ;  its  principles  were  not  only  un-Christian,  but  anti- 
Christian  ;  and  in  spite  of  its  apparent  commercial  victories, 
it  would  inevitably  end  in  ruin  and  disaster.  Some  of  them 
had  been  in  Paris  and  witnessed  the  Revolution  of  l&i8,  and 
had  brought  back  with  them  two  firm  convictions — one,  that 
a  purely  materialistic  civilization,  hke  that  of  the  July 
Monarchy,  must  sooner  or  later  lead  to  a  like  fate ;  and  the 
other,  that  the  socialist  idea  of  co-operation  contained  the 
fertilizing  germ  for  developing  a  really  enduring  and  Christian 
civilization.  Mr.  J,  M.  Ludlow  mentioned  the  matter  to 
Maurice,  and  eventually  a  Society  was  formed,  with  Maurice  as 
president,  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  co-operation  and  educa- 
tion among  the  working  classes.  It  is  beyond  the  scope  of 
the  present  work  to  give  any  fuller  account  of  this  interesting 
and  not  unfruitful  movement  here  ;  but  it  is  to  the  purpose  to 
mark  two  peculiarities  which  distinguish  it  from  other  phases 
of  socialism.  One  is,  that  they  insisted  strongly  upon  the 
futility  of  mere  external  changes  of  condition,  unattended  by 
corresponding  changes  of  inner  character  and  life.  "  There 
is  no  fraternity,"  said  Maurice,  finel}',  "  without  a  common 
Father."  Just  as  it  is  impossible  to  maintain  free  institutions 
among  a  people  who  want  the  virtues  of  freemen,  so  it  is  im- 
possible to  realize  fraternity  in  the  general  arrangements  of 
society,  unless  men  possess  a  sufficient  measure  of  the  industrial 
and  social  virtues.  Hence  the  stress  the  Christian  Socialists 
of  England  laid  on  the  education  of  the  working  classes.  The 
other  peculiarity  is,  that  they  did  not  seek  in  any  way  whatever 


222  Cofitemporary  Socialism, 

to  interfere  with  private  property,  or  to  invoke  the  assistance 
of  the  State.  They  believed  self-help  to  be  a  sounder  principle, 
both  morally  and  pohtically,  and  they  believed  it  to  be  suffi- 
cient. They  held  it  to  be  sufficient,  not  merely  in  course  of 
time,  but  immediately  even,  to  effect  a  change  in  the  face  of 
society.  For  they  loved  and  believed  in  their  cause  with  a 
generous  and  touching  enthusiasm,  and  were  so  sincerely  and 
absolutely  persuaded  of  its  truth  themselves,  that  they  hardly 
entertained  the  idea  of  other  minds  resisting  it.  "  I  certainly 
thought,"  says  Mr.  I,  Hughes,  "  (and  for  that  matter  have  never 
altered  my  opinion  to  this  day)  that  here  we  had  found  the 
solution  to  the  great  labour  question  ;  but  I  was  also  convinced 
that  we  had  nothing  to  do  but  just  to  announce  it,  and  found 
an  association  or  two,  in  order  to  convert  all  England,  and 
usher  in  the  millennium  at  once,  so  plain  did  the  whole  thing 
seem  to  me.  I  will  not  undertake  to  answer  for  the  rest  of  the 
council,  but  I  doubt  whether  I  was  at  all  more  sanguine  than 
the  majority."  Seventeen  co-operative  associations  in  London, 
and  twenty-four  in  the  provinces  (which  were  all  they  had 
established  when  they  ceased  to  publish  their  Journal),  may 
seem  a  poor  result,  but  their  work  is  not  to  be  estimated  by 
that  alone.  The  Christian  Socialists  undoubtedly  gave  a  very 
important  impetus  to  the  whole  movement  of  co-operation, 
and  to  the  general  cause  of  the  amelioration  of  the  labouring 
classes. 

The  general  position  of  Maurice  and  his  allies  (though  with 
important  differences,  as  will  appear)  has  been  taken  up  again 
by  two  groups  in  Germany  at  the  present  day — one  Catholic, 
the  other  Protestant — in  dealing  with  the  social  question  which 
has  for  many  years  agitated  that  country.  In  one  respect  the 
Christian  Socialists  of  England  were  more  fortunate  than  their 
German  brethren.  Nobody  ever  ventured  to  question  the 
purity  of  their  motives.  The  intervention  of  the  clergy  in 
politics  is  generally  unpopular :  they  are  thought,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  to  be  Churchmen  first,  and  patriots  afterwards ;  but 
it  was  impossible  to  suspect  Maurice  and  his  friends  of  being 
influenced  in  their  efforts  at  reform  by  considerations  of 
ecclesiastical  or  electoral  interest,  or  of  having  any  object  at 
heart  but  the  social  good  of  the  nation.     It  is  otherwise  with 


The  Christian  Socialists.  223 

the  Christian  Socialists  of  G-ermany.  Neither  of  the  two 
German  groups  affects  to  conceal  that  one  great  aim  of  its 
work  is  to  restore  and  extend  the  influence  of  the  Church 
among  the  labouring  classes ;  and  it  is  unlikely  that  the 
Clerical  party  in  Germany  were  insensible  to  the  political 
advantage  of  having  organizations  of  working  men  under 
ecclesiastical  control,  though  it  ought  to  be  acknowledged  that 
these  organizations  were  contemplated  before  the  introduction 
of  universal  suffrage.  But  even  though  ecclesiastical  con- 
siderations mingled  with  the  motives  of  the  Christian  Socialists, 
we  see  no  reason  to  doubt  the  genuineness  of  their  interest  in 
the  amelioration  of  the  masses,  or  the  sincerity  of  their  convic- 
tion of  the  economic  soundness  of  their  programme. 

The  Catholic  group  deserves  to  be  considered  first,  because 
it  intervened  in  the  discussion  much  sooner  than  the  Evan- 
gelical, and  because  it  originated  a  much  more  important 
movement — larger  in  its  dimensions  than  the  other,  and 
invested  with  additional  consequence  from  the  circumstance 
that  being  promoted  under  the  countenance  of  dignitaries,  it 
must  be  presumed  to  have  received  the  sanction  of  the  Roman 
Curia,  and  may  therefore  afford  an  index  to  the  general 
attitude  which  the  Catholic  Church  is  disposed  to  assume 
towards  Continental  socialism.  The  socialist  agitation  had 
no  sooner  broken  out,  in  1863,  than  Dr.  Dollinger,  then  a 
pillar  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  strongly  recommended  the 
Catholic  clubs  of  Germany  to  take  the  question  up.  These 
clubs  are  societies  for  mutual  improvement,  recreation,  and 
benefit,  and  are  composed  mainly  of  working  men.  Father 
Kolping,  himself  at  the  time  a  working  man,  had,  in  1847, 
founded  an  extensive  organization  of  Catholic  journeymen, 
which,  in  1872,  had  a  total  membership  of  70,000,  and  consisted 
of  an  affiliation  of  small  journeyman  clubs,  with  a  member- 
ship of  from  50  to  400  each,  in  the  various  towns  of  Germany. 
Then  there  were  also  Catholic  apprentice  clubs — in  many 
cases  in  alliance  with  those  of  the  journeymen ;  there  were 
Catholic  master  clubs,  Catholic  peasant  clubs.  Catholic  benefit 
clubs,  Catholic  young  men's  clubs,  Catholic  credit  clubs. 
Catholic  book  clubs,  etc.,  etc.  These  clubs  naturally  afforded 
an  organization  ready  to  hand  for  any  general  purpose  the 


224  Co7itemporary  Socialism. 

members  miglit  share  in  common,  and  being  composed  of 
working  men,  they  seemed  reasonably  calculated  to  be  of 
effective  service  in  forwarding  the  cause  of  social  amelioration. 
Early  in  1864,  accordingly,  Bishop  Ketteler,  of  Mayence, 
warmly  seconded  Dollinger's  idea,  and  at  the  same  time 
published  a  remarkable  pamphlet  on  "  The  Labour  Question 
and  Christianity,"  in  which  he  unfolded  his  views  of  the  causes 
and  the  cure  of  the  existing  evils. 

William  Immanuel,  Baron  von  Ketteler,  had  been  for  twenty 
years  a  powerful  and  impressive  figure  in  the  public  life  of 
Germany.  His  high  rank,  social  and  ecclesiastical,  his  immense 
energy,  his  weight  of  character,  his  personal  disinterestedness 
of  purpose,  and  his  intellectual  vigour  and  acuteness,  had 
combined  to  give  him  great  importance  both  in  Church  and 
State.  Bom  in  1811,  of  an  ancient  Westphalian  familj'',  he 
was  trained  in  law  and  politics  for  the  public  service,  and 
actually  entered  upon  it,  but  resigned  his  post  in  1838,  in 
consequence  of  the  dispute  about  the  Cologne  bishopric,  and 
resolved  to  give  himself  to  the  work  of  the  Church.  After 
studying  theology  at  Munich  and  Mlinster,  he  was  ordained 
priest  in  1844,  and  became  soon  afterwards  pastor  at  Hopster, 
in  Westphalia.  Being  sent  as  member  for  Langerich  to  the 
German  National  Assembly  at  Frankfort  in  1848,  he  at  once 
made  his  mark  by  the  vigour  with  which  he  strove  for  the 
spiritual  independence  of  the  Church,  by  the  lectures  and 
sermons  he  delivered  on  questions  of  the  day,  and  especially 
by  a  bold  and  generous  oration  he  pronounced  at  the  grave 
of  the  assassinated  deputy,  Prince  Lichnowsky.  This  oration 
excited  sensation  all  over  Germany,  and  Ketteler  was  pro- 
moted, in  1849,  to  the  Hedwigsburg  Church,  in  Berlin,  and 
in  1850  to  the  Bishopric  of  Mayence.  In  this  position  he  found 
scope  for  all  his  powers.  He  founded  a  theological  seminary 
at  Mayence,  erected  orphan-houses  and  reformatories,  intro- 
duced various  religious  orders  and  congregationist  schools,  and 
entering  energetically  into  the  disputes  in  Baden  regarding 
the  place  and  rights  of  the  Catholic  Church,  he  succeeded  in 
establishing  an  understanding  whereby  the  State  gave  up 
much  of  its  patronage,  its  supervision  of  theological  seminaries, 
its  veto    on    ecclesiastical    arrangements,  restored     episcopal 


The  Christian  Socialists.  225 

courts,  and  assigned  the  Church  extensive  influence  over 
popular  education.  He  was  one  of  the  bishops  who  authorized 
the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  in  1854,  but  he 
belonged  to  the  opposition  at  the  Vatican  Council  of  1870. 
He  wrote  a  pamphlet  strongly  deprecating  the  promulgation 
of  the  dogma  of  infallibility,  and  went,  even  at  the  last 
moment,  to  the  Pope  personally,  and  implored  him  to  abandon 
the  idea  of  promulgating  it ;  but  as  his  objection  respected 
its  opportuneness  and  not  its  truth,  he  did  not  secede  with 
Dollinger  when  his  opposition  failed,  but  accepted  the  dogma 
himself  and  demanded  the  submission  of  his  clergy  to  it. 
Bishop  Ketteler  was  returned  to  the  German  Imperial  Diet 
in  1871,  and  led  the  Clerical  Faction  in  opposing  the  eccle- 
siastical policy  of  the  Government.  He  died  at  Binghausen, 
in  Bavaria,  in  1877,  and  is  buried  in  Mayence  Cathedral. 
Ketteler  had  always  been  penetrated  with  the  ambition  of 
making  the  Catholic  Church  a  factor  of  practical  importance 
in  the  political  and  social  life  of  Germany,  and  with  the  con- 
viction that  the  clergy  ought  to  make  themselves  masters  of 
social  and  political  science  so  as  to  be  able  to  exercise  a  leading 
and  effective  influence  over  public  opinion  on  questions  of 
social  amelioration.  He  has  himself  written  much,  though 
nothing  of  permanent  value,  on  these  subjects,  and  did  not 
approach  them  with  unwashed  hands  when  he  published  his 
pamphlet  in  1864. 

In  this  pamphlet,  he  says  the  labour  question  is  one  which 
it  is  his  business,  both  as  a  Christian  and  as  a  bishop,  to  deal 
with :  as  a  Christian,  because  Christ,  as  Saviour  of  the  world, 
seeks  not  only  to  redeem  men's  souls,  but  to  heal  their  sorrows 
and  soften  their  condition ;  and  as  a  bishop,  because  the  Church 
had,  according  to  her  ancient  custom,  imposed  upon  him,  as 
one  of  his  consecration  vows,  that  he  would,  "  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord,  be  kind  and  merciful  to  the  poor  and  the  stranger, 
and  to  all  that  are  in  any  kind  of  distress."  He  considers  the 
labour  question  of  the  present  day  to  be  the  very  serious  and 
plain  question,  how  the  great  bulk  of  the  working  classes  are 
to  get  the  bread  and  clothing  necessary  to  sustain  them  in 
life.  Things  have  come  to  this  pass  in  consequence  of  two 
important  economic  changes — which  he  incorrectly   ascribes 

Q 


2  26  Contemporary  Socialism. 

to  the  political  revolution  at  the  end  of  last  century,  merely 
because  they  have  taken  place  mostly  since  that  date — the 
spread  of  industrial  freedom,  and  the  ascendancy  of  the  large 
capitalists.  In  consequence  of  these  changes  the  labourer  is 
now  treated  as  a  commodity,  and  the  rate  of  his  wages  settled 
by  the  same  law  that  determines  the  price  of  every  other 
commodity — the  cost  of  its  production ;  and  the  employer  is 
always  able  to  press  wages  down  to  the  least  figure  which  the 
labourer  will  take  rather  than  starve.  Ketteler  accepts  en- 
tirely Lassalle's  teaching  about  "  the  iron  and  cruel  law,'-  and 
holds  it  to  have  been  so  conclusively  proved  in  the  course  of 
the  controversy  that  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  dispute  it  with- 
out a  deliberate  intention  of  deceiving  the  people.  Now  there 
is  no  doubt  that  Ricardo's  law  of  value  is  neither  so  iron  nor 
so  cruel  as  Lassalle  took  it  to  be ;  and  that  when  Lassalle 
alleged  that  in  consequence  of  this  law  96  per  cent,  of  the 
population  of  Germany  had  to  support  their  families  on  less 
than  ten  shillings  a  week,  and  were  therefore  in  a  state  of 
chronic  starvation,  he  based  his  statement  on  a  calculation  of 
Dieterici's,  which  was  purely  conjectural,  and  which,  besides, 
disregarded  the  fact  that  in  working-class  families  there  were 
usually  more  breadwinners  than  one.  Ketteler,  however, 
adopts  this  whole  statement  of  the  case  implicitly,  and  says 
the  social  problem  of  our  day  is  simply  how  to  emancipate  the 
labouring  class  from  the  operation  of  this  economic  law.  "  It 
is  no  longer  possible  to  doubt  that  the  whole  material  exis- 
tence of  almost  the  entire  labouring  population — e.e.,  of  much 
the  greatest  part  of  men  in  modern  states,  and  of  their  families 
— that  the  daily  question  about  the  necessary  bread  for  man, 
wife,  and  children,  is  exposed  to  all  the  fluctuations  of  the 
market  and  of  the  price  of  commodities.  I  know  nothing 
more  deplorable  than  this  fact.  What  sensations  must  it 
cause  in  those  poor  men  who,  with  all  they  hold  dear,  are 
day  after  day  at  the  mercy  of  the  accidents  of  market  price  ? 
That  is  the  slave  market  of  our  Liberal  Europe,  fashioned 
after  the  model  of  our  humanist,  rationalistic,  anti- Christian 
Liberalism,  and  freemasonry."  The  bishop  never  spares  an 
opportunity  of  attacking  "  heathen  humanist  Liberalism," 
which  he  says  has  pushed  the  labouring  man  into  the  water, 


The  Christian  Socialists.  227 

and  now  stands  on  the  bank  spinning  fine  theories  about  his 
freedom,  but  calmly  seeing  him  drown. 

After  this  it  might  be  expected  that  Ketteler  would  be  all 
for  abolishing  industrial  freedom,  and  for  restoring  a  regime 
of  compulsory  guilds  and  corporations ;  but  he  is  not.  He 
acknowledges  that  the  old  system  of  guilds  had  its  advantages  ; 
it  was  a  kind  of  assured  understanding  between  the  workman 
and  society,  according  to  which  the  former  adjusted  his  work 
and  the  latter  his  wages.  But  it  was  the  abuses  of  the  com- 
pulsory powers  of  the  guilds  that  led  f  o  industrial  freedom ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  industrial  freedom  has  great  counter- 
vailing advantages  of  its  own  which  he  scruples  to  give  up. 
It  has  immensely  increased  production  and  cheapened  com- 
modities, and  so  enabled  the  lower  classes  to  enjoy  means  of 
life  and  enjoyment  they  had  not  before.  Nor  does  Ketteler 
approve  of  Lassalle's  scheme  of  establishing  productive  associa- 
tions of  working  men  upon  capital  supplied  by  the  State.  Not 
that  he  objects  to  productive  associations ;  on  the  contrary,  he 
declares  them  to  be  a  glorious  idea,  and  thinks  them  the 
true  solution  of  the  problem.  But  he  objects  to  supplying 
their  capital  by  the  State,  as  involving  a  direct  violation  of 
the  law  of  property.  The  Catholic  Church,  he  says,  has  never 
maintained  an  absolute  right  of  property.  Her  divines  have 
unanimously  taught  that  the  right  of  property  cannot  avail 
against  a  neighbour  who  is  in  extreme  need,  because  God 
alone  is  absolute  proprietor,  and  no  man  is  more  than  a 
limited  vassal,  holding  under  God,  and  on  the  conditions 
which  He  imposes ;  and  one  of  these  conditions  is  that  any 
man  in  extremities  is  entitled  to  satisfy  his  necessity  where 
and  how  he  pleases.*     In  such  a  case,  according  to  Catholic 


*  The  bishop  draws  this  conclusion  from  the  principle  that  God  has 
directed  all  men  to  nature  to  obtain  from  it  the  satisfaction  of  their 
necessary  wants,  and  that  this  original  right  of  the  needy  cannot  be 
superseded  by  the  subsequent  institution  of  private  property.  No  doubt, 
he  admits,  that  institution  is  also  of  God.  It  is  the  appointed  way  by 
which  man's  dominion  over  nature  is  to  be  realized,  because  it  is  the  way 
in  which  nature  is  best  utilized  for  the  higher  civilization  of  man.  But 
this  purpose  is  secondary  and  subordinate  to  the  other.  And,  therefore, 
concludes  the  bishop,  "  firmly  as  theology  upholds  the  right  of  private 


2  28  Contemporary  Socialism. 

doctrine,  it  is  not  the  man  in  distress  that  is  the  thief,  but  the 
proprietor  who  would  gainsay  and  stop  him.  The  distressed 
have  a  positive  right  to  succour,  and  the  State  may  therefore, 
without  violating  any  of  the  rights  of  property,  tax  the 
parishes,  or  the  proprietors,  for  the  relief  of  the  poor.  But 
beyond  this  the  State  has  no  title  to  go.  It  may  legitimately 
tax  people  for  the  purpose  of  saving  working  men  from  ex- 
tremities, but  not  for  the  purpose  of  bettering  their  normal 
position. 

But  where  the  civil  authority  ends  the  Christian  authority 
comes  in,  and  the  rich  have  only  escaped  the  obligation  of 
compulsory  legal  enactment,  to  find  themselves  under  the 
more  far-reaching  obligations  of  moral  duty  and  Christian 
love.  The  Church  declares  that  the  man  who  does  not  give 
alms  where  he  ought  to  give  it  stands  in  the  same  category 
as  a  thief;  and  there  is  no  limit  to  this  obligation  but  his 
power  of  giving  help,  and  his  belief  that  it  would  be  more 
hurtful  to  give  than  to  keep  it.  Ketteler's  plan,  accordingly, 
is  that  the  capital  for  the  productive  associations  should  be 
raised  by  voluntary  subscriptions  on  the  part  of  Christian 
people.  He  thinks  he  has  made  out  a  strong  case  for  estab- 
lishing this  as  a  Christian  obligation.  He  has  shown  that  a 
perilous  crisis  prevails,  that  this  crisis  can  only  be  removed  by 
productive  associations,  that  productive  associations  cannot  be 
started  without  capital,  and  he  says  it  is  a  vain  dream  of 
Huber's  to  think  of  getting  the  capital  from  the  savings  of 
working  men  themselves,  for  most  of  the  working  men  are  in 
a  distressed  condition,  and  if  a  few  are  better  off,  their  savings 
could  only  establish  associations  so  few  in  number  and  so  small 
in  scale,  as  to  be  little  better  than  trifling  with  the  evil.  He 
sees  no  remedy  but  making  productive  associations  a  scheme 
of  the  Church,  and  appeaUng  to  that  Christian  philanthropy 
and  sense  of  duty  which  had  already  done  great  service  of  a 

property,  it  asserts  at  the  same  time  that  the  higher  right  by  which  all 
men  are  directed  to  nature's  supplies  dare  not  be  infringed,  and  that, 
consequently,  any  one  who  finds  himself  in  extreme  need  is  justified, 
when  other  means  fail,  in  satisfying  this  extreme  need  where  and  how  he 
may  (wo  und  wie  er  es  vermag)." — Die,  Arhdter-frage  und  das  Christen- 
thum  (p.  78). 


The  Christian  Socialists,  229 

like  nature — as,  for  example,  in  producing  capital  to  emanci- 
pate slaves  in  Italy  and  elsewhere. 

This  remarkable  proposal  of  the  bishop  seems  to  have  fallen 
dead.  Though  he  wrote  and  laboured  much  in  connection 
with  the  labour  question  afterwards,  he  never  reverted  to  it 
again ;  and  when  a  Christian  Socialist  party  was  formed, 
under  his  countenance,  they  adopted  a  programme  which 
made  large  demands  not  only  on  the  intervention,  but  on  the 
pecuniary  help  of  the  State.  It  was  not  till  1868  that  any 
steps  were  taken  towards  the  actual  organization  of  such  a 
party.  In  June  of  that  year  three  Catholic  clubs  met  together 
at  Crefeld,  and,  after  discussing  the  social  question,  agreed  to 
publish  a  journal  (the  ChristUche  Sociale  Blatter)  to  promote 
their  views.  In  September  of  the  following  year  the  whole 
subject  of  the  relations  of  the  Church  to  the  labour  question 
was  discussed  at  a  conference  of  the  Catholic  bishops  of  Ger- 
many, held  at  Fulda,  and  attended  by  Ketteler  among  others. 
This  conference  strongly  recommended  the  clergy  to  make 
themselves  thoroughly  acquainte.d  with  that  and  other  econo- 
mic questions,  to  interest  themselves  generally  in  the  con- 
dition of  the  working  class  they  moved  among,  and  even  to 
travel  in  foreign  countries  to  see  the  state  of  the  labourers 
there  and  the  effects  of  the  institutions  established  for  their 
amelioration.  The  conference  also  approved  of  the  formation 
of  Catholic  Labourers'  Associations,  for  the  promotion  of  the 
general  elevation  of  their  own  class,  but  held  that  the  Church 
had  no  call,  directly  or  officially,  to  take  the  initiative  in 
founding  them.  This  duty  was  undertaken,  however,  later 
in  the  same  month,  by  a  general  meeting  of  the  Catholic  Clubs 
of  Germany,  which  appointed  a  special  committee,  including 
Professor  Schulte  and  Baron  Schorlemer-Abst,  for  the  express 
purpose  of  founding  and  organizing  Christian  social  clubs, 
which  should  strive  for  the  economic  and  moral  amelioration 
of  the  labouring  classes.  This  committee  set  itself  immediately 
to  work,  and  the  result  was  the  Christian  Social  Associations, 
or,  as  they  are  sometimes  called  from  their  patron  saint,  the 
St.  Joseph  Associations.  They  were  composed  of,  and  managed 
by,  working  men,  though  they  liked  to  have  some  man  of 
eminence — never   a  clergyman — at  the   head    of   them,   and 


230  Contemporary  Socialism. 

though  they  allowed  persons  of  property,  clergymen,  and 
especially  employers  of  labour,  to  be  honorary  members. 
They  met  every  Sunday  evening  to  discuss  social  questions, 
and  politics  were  excluded,  except  questions  affecting  the 
Church,  and  on  these  a  decided  partisanship  was  encouraged. 

The  principles  of  this  party — or  what  may  be  called  their 
programme — is  explained  in  a  speech  delivered  by  Canon 
Moufang  to  his  constituents  in  Mayence,  in  February,  1871, 
and  published  with  warm  approbation,  in  the  Chrutliche 
Sociale  Blatter  in  March.  Christoph  Moufang  is,  like  Ketteler, 
a  leader  of  the  German  Clerical  party,  and  entitled  to  the 
highest  esteem  for  his  character,  his  intellectual  parts,  and  his 
public  career.  Born  in  1817,  he  was  first  destined  for  the 
medical  profession,  and  studied  physic  at  Bonn ;  but  he  soon 
abandoned  this  intention,  and  betook  himself  to  theology. 
After  studying  at  Bonn  and  Munich,  he  was  ordained  priest 
in  1839.  He  was  appointed  in  1851  professor  of  moral  and 
pastoral  theology  in  the  new  theological  seminary  which 
Bishop  Ketteler  had  founde4  at  Mayence,  and  in  1854  was 
made  canon  of  the  cathedral.  Moufang  entered  the  First 
Hessian  Chamber  in  1862  as  representative  of  the  bishop,  and 
made  a  name  as  a  powerful  champion  of  High  Church  views 
and  of  the  general  ecclesiastical  policy  of  Bishop  Ketteler.  In 
1868  he  was  chosen  one  of  the  committee  to  make  preparations 
for  the  Vatican  Council ;  but  at  the  Council  he  belonged  to  the 
opponents  of  the  dogma  of  infallibility,  and  left  Rome  before 
the  dogma  was  promulgated.  He  submitted  afterwards,  how- 
ever, and  worked  sedulously  in  its  sense.  Moufang  sat  in  the 
Imperial  Diet  from  1871  to  1877,  was  a  leading  member  of  the 
Centre,  and  stoutly  resisted  the  Falk  legislation.  He  is  joint- 
editor  of  the  Katholik,  and  is  author  of  various  polemical 
writings,  and  of  a  work  on  the  history  of  the  Jesuits  in  Ger- 
many. 

Moufang  takes  a  different  view  of  the  present  duty  of  the 
Church  in  relation  to  the  social  question  from  that  which  we 
saw  to  have  been  taken  by  Ketteler.  He  asks  for  no  pecuniary 
help  from  the  Church,  nor  for  any  special  and  novel  kind  of 
activity  whatever.  The  problem  cannot,  in  his  opinion,  be 
effectively  and  permanently  solved  without  her  co-operation, 


The  Christian  Socialists.  231 

but  then  the  whole  service  she  is  able  and  required  to  render  is 
contained  in  the  course  of  her  ordinary  ministrations  in  diffus- 
ing a  spirit  of  love  and  justice  and  fairness  among  the  various 
classes  of  society,  in  maintaining  her  charities  for  the  poor  and 
helpless  in  dispensing  comfort  and  distress,  and  in  offering  to 
the  weary  the  hope  of  a  future  life.  Moufang  makes  much 
more  demand  on  the  State  than  on  the  Church,  in  this  also  dis- 
agreeing with  Bishop  Ketteler's  pamphlet.  He  says  the  State 
can  and  must  help  the  poorer  classes  in  four  different  ways  : — 
1st.  By  giving  legislative  protection.  Just  as  the  landlord 
and  the  money-lender  are  legally  protected  in  their  rights  by 
the  State,  so  the  labourer  ought  to  be  legally  protected  in  his 
property,  which  are  his  powers  and  time  of  labour.  The  State 
ought  to  give  him  legal  security  against  being  robbed  of  these, 
his  only  property,  by  the  operation  of  free  competition.  "With 
this  view,  Moufang  demands  the  legalization  of  working  men's 
associations  of  various  kinds,  the  prohibition  of  Sunday  labour, 
the  legal  fixing  of  a  normal  day  of  labour,  legal  restriction  of 
labour  of  women  and  children,  legal  provision  against  un- 
wholesome workshops,  appointment  of  factory  inspectors,  and 
direct  legal  fixing  of  the  rate  of  wages.  The  last  point  is  an 
important  peculiarity  in  the  position  of  the  Catholic  Socialists. 
Moufang  contends  that  competition  is  a  sound  enough  principle 
for  regulating  the  price  of  commodities,  but  that  it  is  a  very 
unsound  one,  and  a  very  unsafe  one,  for  determining  the  price 
of  labour,  because  he  holds  that  labour  is  not  a  commodity. 
Labour  is  a  man's  powers  of  life ;  it  is  the  man  himself,  and 
the  law  must  see  to  its  protection.  The  law  protects  the 
capitalist  in  his  right  to  his  interest,  and  surely  the  labouring 
man's  powers  of  life  are  entitled  to  the  same  consideration.  If 
an  employer  says  to  a  capitalist  from  whom  he  has  borrowed 
money :  ''  A  crisis  has  come,  a  depression  in  trade,  and  I  am 
no  longer  able  to  pay  such  high  interest ;  I  will  pay  you  two- 
thirds  or  one-third  of  the  previous  rate,"  what  does  the 
capitalist  say  ?  He  refuses  to  take  it,  and  why  ?  Simply 
because  he  knows  that  the  law  will  sustain  him  in  his  claim. 
But  if  the  employer  says  to  his  labourer :  "  A  depression  of 
trade  has  come,  and  I  cannot  afford  you  more  than  two-thirds 
or  one-third  of  yom'  present  wages,"  what  can  the  labourer  do? 


232  Contemporary  Socialism, 

He  has  no  alternative.  He  must  take  tlie  wages  offered  him 
or  go,  and  to  go  means  to  starve.  Why  should  not  the  law- 
stand  at  the  labourer's  back,  as  it  does  at  the  capitalist's,  in 
enforcing  what  is  right  and  just  ?  There  is  no  more  infraction 
of  freedom  in  the  one  case  than  in  the  other.  Moufang's 
argument  here  is  based  on  an  illusive  analogy;  for  in  the 
contract  for  the  use  of  capital  the  employer  agrees  to  pay  a 
fixed  rate  of  interest  so  long  as  he  retains  the  principal,  and  he 
can  only  avail  himself  of  subsequent  falls  in  the  money  market 
by  returning  the  principal  and  opening  a  fresh  contract ; 
whereas  in  the  contract  for  the  use  of  labour  the  employer 
engages  by  the  week  or  the  day,  returning  the  principal,  as  it 
were,  at  the  end  of  that  term,  and  making  a  new  arrangement. 
The  point  to  be  noted,  however,  is  that  Moufang's  object,  like 
Ketteler's,  is  to  deliver  working  men  from  their  hand-to-mouth 
dependence  on  the  current  fluctuations  of  the  market ;  that  he 
thinks  there  is  something  not  merely  pernicious  but  radically 
unjust  in  their  treatment  under  the  present  system  ;  and  that 
he  calls  upon  the  State  to  institute  some  regular  machinery — 
a  board  with  compulsory  powers,  and  composed  of  labourers 
and  magistrates — for  fixing  everywhere  and  in  every  trade  a 
fair  day's  wages  for  a  fair  day's  work. 

2nd.  The  State  ought  to  give  pecuniary  help.  It  advances 
money  on  easy  terms  to  railway  schemes  ;  why  should  it  not 
offer  working  men  cheap  loans  for  sound  co-operative  enter- 
prises ?  Of  course  it  ought  to  make  a  keen  preliminary  exam- 
ination of  the  projects  proposed,  and  keep  a  sharp  look-out 
against  swindUng  or  ill-considered  schemes  ;  but  if  the  project 
is  sound  and  likely,  it  should  be  ready  to  lend  the  requisite 
capital  at  a  low  interest.  This  proposal  of  starting  productive 
associations  on  State  credit  is  an  important  divergence  from 
Ketteler,  who,  in  his  pamphlet,  condemns  it  as  a  violation  of 
the  rights  of  property. 

3rd.  The  State  ought  to  reduce  the  taxes  and  military 
burdens  of  the  labouring  classes. 

4th.  The  State  ought  to  fetter  the  domination  of  the  money 
power,  and  especially  to  check  excesses  of  speculation,  and 
control  the  operations  of  the  Stock  Exchange. 

From  this  programme  it  appears  that  the  Catholic  move- 


The  Christian  Socialists.  233 

ment  goes  a  long  way  with  the  socialists  in  their  cries  of 
wrong,  but  only  a  short  way  in  their  plans  of  redress. 
Moufang's  proposals  may  be  wise  or  unwise,  but  they  con- 
template only  corrections  of  the  present  industrial  system,  and 
not  its  reconstruction.  Many  Liberals  are  disposed  to  favour 
the  idea  of  establishing  courts  of  conciliation  with  compulsory 
powers,  and  Bismarck  himself  once  said,  before  the  socialists 
showed  themselves  unpatriotic  at  the  time  of  the  French  war, 
that  he  saw  no  reason  why  the  State,  which  gave  large  sums 
for  agricultural  experiments,  should  not  spend  something  in 
giving  co-operative  production  a  fair  trial.  The  plans  of  labour 
courts  and  of  State  credit  to  approved  co-operative  under- 
takings are  far  from  the  socialist  schemes  of  the  abolition  of 
private  property  in  the  instruments  of  production,  and  the 
systematic  regulation  of  all  industry  by  the  State  ;  and  they 
afford  no  fair  ground  for  the  fear,  which  many  persons  of 
ability  entertain,  of  "  an  alliance  " — to  use  Bismarck's  phrase 
— "  between  the  black  International  and  the  red."  Bishop 
Martensen  holds  Catholicism  to  be  essentially  socialistic,  be- 
cause it  suppresses  all  individual  rights  and  freedom  in  the 
intellectual  sphere,  as  socialism  does  in  the  economic.  But 
men  may  detest  private  judgment  without  taking  the  least 
offence  at  private  property.  A  bigot  need  not  be  a  sociahst, 
any  more  than  a  socialist  a  bigot,  though  each  stifles  the 
principle  of  individuality  in  one  department  of  things.  If 
there  is  to  be  any  alliance  between  the  Church  and  socialism, 
it  will  be  not  because  the  former  has  been  trained,  under  an 
iron  organization,  to  cherish  a  horror  of  individuality  and  a 
passion  for  an  economic  organization  as  rigid  as  its  own 
ecclesiastical  one,  but  it  will  be  because  the  Church  happens 
to  have  a  distinct  political  interest  at  the  time  in  cultivating 
good  relations  with  a  new  political  force.  How  far  Moufang 
and  his  associates  have  been  influenced  by  this  kind  of  con- 
sideration we  cannot  pretend  to  judge,  but  the  sympathy  they 
show  is  not  so  much  with  the  socialists  as  with  the  labouring 
classes  generally,  and  their  movement  is  meant  so  far  to  take 
the  wind  from  socialism,  whether  with  the  mere  view  of 
filling  their  own  sails  with  it  or  no. 

No  voice  was  raised  in  the  Protestant  Churches  in  Germany 


234  Contempora7'y  Socialism. 

on  the  social  question  till  1878.  They  suffer  from  their  absolute 
dependence  on  the  State,  and  have  become  churches  of  doctors 
and  professors,  without  effective  practical  interest  or  initiative, 
and  without  that  strong  popular  sympathy  of  a  certain  kind 
which  almost  necessarily  pervades  the  atmosphere  of  a  Church 
like  the  Catholic,  which  pits  itself  against  States,  and  knows 
that  its  power  of  doing  so  rests,  in  the  last  analysis,  on  its  hold 
over  the  hearts  of  the  people.  The  Home  Missionary  Society 
indeed  discussed  the  question  from  time  to  time,  but  chiefly  in 
connection  with  the  effects  of  the  socialist  propaganda  on  the 
religious  condition  of  the  country ;  and  it  was  this  aspect  of 
the  subject  that  eventually  stirred  a  section  of  the  orthodox 
Evangelical  clergy  to  take  practical  action.  They  asked 
themselves  how  it  was  that  the  working  classes  were  so  largely 
adopting  the  desolate  atheistic  opinions  which  were  found 
associated  with  the  socialist  movement,  when  the  Church 
offered  to  gather  them  under  her  wing,  and  brighten  their  life 
with  the  comforts  and  encouragements  of  Christian  faith  and 
hope.  They  felt  strongly  that  they  must  take  more  interest  in 
the  temporal  welfare  of  the  working  classes  than  they  had 
hitherto  done,  and  must  apply  the  ethical  and  social  principles 
of  Christianity  to  the  solution  of  economic  problems  and  the 
promotion  of  social  reform.  In  short,  they  sought  to  present 
Christianity  as  the  labourer's  friend.  The  leaders  of  this 
movement  were  men  of  much  inferior  calibre  to  those  of  the 
corresponding  Catholic  movement.  The  principal  of  them 
were  Rudolph  Todt,  a  pastor  at  Barentheim  in  Old  Preignitz, 
who  published  in  1878  a  book  on  "  Radical  German  Socialism 
and  Christian  Society,"  which  created  considerable  sensation ; 
and  Dr.  Stocker,  then  one  of  the  Court  preachers  at  Berlin,  a 
member  of  the  Prussian  Diet,  and  an  ardent  promoter  of 
reactionary  policy  in  various  directions.  He  is  a  warm 
advocate  of  denominational  education,  and  of  extending  the 
power  of  the  Crown,  of  the  State,  and  of  the  landed  class  ;  and 
he  was  a  prime  mover  in  the  Jew-baiting  movement  which 
excited  Germany  a  few  years  ago.  This  antipathy  to  the  Jews 
has  been  for  many  years  a  cardinal  tendency  of  the  "  Agra- 
rians," a  small  political  group  mainly  of  nobles  and  great 
landed  proprietors,  with  whom  Stocker  frequently  allies  him- 


The  Christian  Socialists.  235 

self,  and  who  profess  to  treat  all  political  questions  from  a 
strictly  Christian  standpoint,  but  work  almost  exclusively  to 
assert  the  interests  of  the  landowners  against  the  growing 
ascendancy  of  the  commercial  and  financial  classes,  among 
whom  Jews  occupy  an  eminent  place.  "We  mention  this  anti- 
Jewish  agitation  here  to  point  out  that,  while  no  doubt  fed  by 
other  passions  also,  one  of  its  chief  ingredients  is  that  same 
antagonism  to  the  hourgeoide — compounded  of  envy  of  their 
success,  contempt  for  their  money-seeking  spirit,  and  anger 
at  their  supposed  expropriation  of  the  rest  of  society — which 
animates  all  forms  of  continental  socialism,  and  has  already 
proved  a  very  dangerous  political  force  in  the  French  Revolu- 
tion of  1848. 

Todt's  work  is  designed  to  set  forth  the  social  principles  and 
mission  of  Christianity  on  the  basis  of  a  critical  investigation 
of  the  Xew  Testament,  which  he  believes  to  be  an  authorita- 
tive guide  on  economic  as  well  as  moral  and  dogmatic  ques- 
tions. He  says  that  to  solve  the  social  problem,  we  must  take 
political  economy  in  the  one  hand,  the  scientific  literature  of 
socialism  in  the  other,  and  keep  the  New  Testament  before  us. 
As  the  result  of  his  examination,  he  condemns  the  existing 
industrial  regime  as  being  decidedly  unchristian,  and  declares 
the  general  principles  of  socialism,  and  even  its  main  concrete 
proposals,  to  be  directly  prescribed  and  countenanced  by  Holy 
Writ.  Like  all  who  assume  the  name  of  socialist,  he  cherishes 
a  marked  repugnance  to  the  economic  doctrines  of  modern 
Liberalism,  the  leaven  of  the  bourgeoisie ;  and  much  of  his 
work  is  devoted  to  show  the  inner  affinity  of  Christianity  and 
socialism,  and  the  inner  antagonism  between  Christianity 
and  Manchesterdom.  He  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  every 
active  Christian  who  makes  conscience  of  his  faith  has  a  so- 
cialistic vein  in  him,  and  that  every  socialist,  however  hostile 
he  may  be  to  the  Christian  religion,  has  an  unconscious  Chris- 
tianity in  his  heart ;  whereas,  on  the  other  hand,  the  merely 
nominal  Christian,  who  has  never  really  got  out  of  his  natui'al 
state,  is  always  a  spiritual  Manchestrist,  worshipping  laissez 
faire,  laissez  aller,  with  his  whole  soul,  and  that  a  Manchestrist 
is  never  in  reality  a  true  and  sound  Christian,  however  much 
he  may  usurp  the  name.      Christianity  and  socialism  are  en- 


236  Contemporary  Socialism. 

gaged  in  a  common  work,  trying  to  make  the  reality  of  tilings 
correspond  better  with  an  ideal  state ;  and  in  doing  their  work 
they  rely  on  the  same  ethical  principle,  the  love  of  our  neigh- 
bour, and  they  repudiate  the  Manchester  idolatry  of  self-in- 
terest. The  socialist  ideas  of  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity 
are  part  and  parcel  of  the  Christian  system  ;  and  the  socialist 
ideas  of  solidarity  of  interests,  of  co-operative  production,  and 
of  democracy  have  all  a  direct  Biblical  foundation,  in  the  con- 
stitution and  customs  of  the  Church,  and  in  the  apostolic 
teaching  regarding  it. 

Radical  socialism,  according  to  Todt,  consists  of  three  ele- 
ments :  first,  in  economics,  communism ;  second,  in  politics, 
republicanism  ;  third,  in  religion,  atheism.  Under  the  last 
head,  of  course,  there  is  no  analogy,  but  direct  contradiction, 
between  Socialism  and  Christianity ;  but  Todt  deplores  the 
atheism  that  prevails  among  the  socialists  as  not  merely  an 
error,  but  a  fatal  inconsistency.  If  socialism  would  but  base 
its  demands  on  the  Gospel,  he  says,  it  would  be  resistless,  and 
all  labourers  would  flow  to  it ;  but  atheistic  socialism  can 
never  fulfil  its  own  promises,  and  issues  a  draft  which  Christi- 
anity alone  has  the  power  to  meet.  It  is  hopeless  to  think  of 
founding  an  enduring  democratic  State  on  the  principles  of 
liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity,  unless  these  principles  are 
always  sustained  and  reinvigorated  by  the  Divine  fraternal 
love  that  flows  from  faith  in  Jesus  Christ. 

As  to  the  second  principle  of  socialism,  Todt  says,  that 
while  Holy  Scripture  contains  no  direct  prescription  on  the 
point,  it  may  be  inferentially  established  that  a  republic  is  the 
form  of  government  that  is  most  harmonious  with  the  Chris- 
tian ideal.  His  deduction  of  this  is  peculiar.  The  Divine 
government  of  the  world,  he  owns,  is  monarchical,  but  then  it 
is  a  government  which  cannot  be  copied  by  sinful  men,  and 
therefore  cannot  have  been  meant  as  a  pattern  for  them.  But 
God,  he  says,  has  established  His  Church  on  earth  as  a  visible 
type  of  His  own  invisible  providential  government,  and  the 
Church  is  a  "  republic  under  an  eternal  President,  sitting  by 
free  choice  of  the  people,  Jesus  Christ."  This  is  both  fanciful 
and  false,  for  Christ  is  an  absolute  ruler,  and  no  mere  minister 
of  the  popular  will ;  and  there  is  not  the  remotest  ground  for 


The  Christian  Socialists.  237 

founding  a  system  of  Biblical  politics  on  the  constitution  of  the 
Church.  But  it  shows  the  length  Todt  is  disposed  to  go  to 
conciliate  the  favour  of  the  socialists. 

But  the  most  important  element  of  socialism  is  its  third  or 
economic  principle — communism  ;  and  this  he  represents  to 
be  entirely  in  harmony  with  the  economic  ideal  of  the  New 
Testament.  He  describes  the  communistic  idea  as  consisting 
of  two  parts :  first,  the  general  principles  of  liberty,  equality, 
and  fraternity,  which  he  finds  directly  involved  in  the  Scrip- 
tural doctrines  of  moral  responsibility,  of  men's  common  origin 
and  redemption,  and  of  the  law  of  love  ;  and  second,  the  trans- 
formation of  all  private  property  in  the  instruments  of  produc- 
tion into  common  property,  which  includes  three  points  :  {a) 
the  abolition  of  the  present  wages  system ;  (6)  giving  the 
labourer  the  full  product  of  his  labour;  and  (c)  associated 
labour.  As  to  the  first  two  of  these  points,  Todt  pronounces 
the  present  wages  system  to  be  thoroughly  unjust,  because  it 
robs  the  labourer  of  the  full  product  of  his  labour ;  and  be- 
cause unjust,  it  is  unchristian.  He  accepts  the  ordinary  so- 
cialist teaching  about  "  the  iron  and  cruel  law."  He  accepts, 
too,  Marx's  theory  of  value,  and  declares  it  to  be  unanswer- 
able ;  and  he  therefore  finds  no  difficulty  in  saying  that  Chris- 
tianity condemns  a  system  which  in  his  opinion  grinds  the 
faces  of  the  labouring  classes  with  incessant  toil,  filches  from 
them  the  just  reward  of  their  work,  and  leaves  them  to  hover 
hopelessly  on  the  margin  of  destitution.  If  there  is  any 
scheme  that  promises  effectually  to  cure  this  condition  of 
things,  Christianity  will  also  approve  of  that  scheme ;  and 
such  a  scheme  he  discovers  in  the  socialist  proposal  of  col- 
lective property  and  associated  labour.  This  proposal,  how- 
ever, derives  direct  countenance,  he  maintains,  from  the  New 
Testament.  It  is  supported  by  the  texts  which  describe  the 
Church  as  an  organism  under  the  figure  of  a  body  with  many 
members,  by  the  example  of  the  common  bag  of  the  twelve, 
and  by  the  communism  of  the  primitive  Church  of  Jerusalem. 
But  the  texts  about  the  Church  as  an  organism  have  no  real 
bearing  on  the  subject  at  all ;  for  the  Church  is  not  meant  to 
be  an  authoritative  pattern  either  for  political  or  for  econo- 
mic organization  ;  and  besides,  the  figure  of  the  body  and  its 


238  Contemporary  Socialism. 

members  would  apply  better  to  Bastiat's  theory  of  the  natural 
harmony  of  interests  than  to  the  socialist  idea  of  the  solidarity 
of  interests.  Then  the  common  bag  of  the  disciples  did  not 
prevent  them  from  having  boats  and  other  instruments  of  pro- 
duction of  their  own  individual  property  ;  and  we  know  that 
the  communism  of  the  primitive  Church  of  Jerusalem  (which 
was  a  decided  economic  failure,  for  the  poverty  of  that 
Church  had  to  be  repeatedly  relieved  by  collections  in  other 
parts  of  Christendom)  was  not  a  community  of  property,  but, 
what  is  a  higher  thing,  a  community  of  use,  and  that  it  was 
not  compulsory  but  spontaneous. 

Todt,  however,  after  seeming  thus  to  commit  himself  and 
Christianity  without  reserve  to  socialism,  suddenly  shrinks 
from  his  own  boldness,  and  draws  back.  Collective  property 
may  be  countenanced  by  Scripture,  but  he  finds  private  pro- 
perty to  be  as  much  or  even  more  so  ;  and  he  cannot  on  any 
consideration  consent  to  the  abolition  of  private  property  by 
force.  It  was  right  enough  to  abolish  slavery  by  force,  for 
slavery  is  an  unchristian  institution.  But  though  private 
property  is  certainly  founded  on  selfishness,  there  are  so  many 
examples  of  it  presented  before  us  in  the  New  Testament  with- 
out condemnation,  that  Todt  shrinks  from  pronouncing  it  to 
be  an  unchristian  institution.  Collective  property  may  be 
better,  but  private  property  will  never  disappear  till  selfishness 
is  swallowed  up  of  love ;  and  a  triumph  of  socialism  at  present, 
while  its  disciples  are  unbelievers  and  have  not  Christ,  the 
fount  of  love,  in  their  hearts,  would  involve  society  in  much 
more  serious  evils  than  those  which  it  seeks  to  remove.  Todt's 
socialism,  therefore,  is  not  a  thing  of  the  present,  but  an  ideal 
of  the  distant  future,  to  be  realized  after  Christian  proprietors 
have  come  of  their  own  accord  to  give  up  their  estates,  and 
socialists  have  all  been  converted  to  Christianity.  For  the 
present,  in  spite  of  his  stern  view  of  the  great  wrong  and 
injustice  the  working  classes  suffer,  Todt  has  no  remedy  to 
suggest,  except  that  things  would  be  better  if  proprietors 
learnt  more  to  regard  their  wealth  as  a  trust  of  which  they 
were  only  stewards,  and  if  employers  treated  their  workmen 
with  the  personal  consideration  due  to  Christian  brothers ;  and 
he  thinks  the  cultivation  of  this  spirit  ought  to  be  more  ex- 


The  Christian  Socialists.  239 

pressly  aimed  at  in  the  work  of  the  Church.  This  is  probably, 
after  all,  the  sum  of  what  Christianity  has  to  say  on  the  subject; 
but  it  seems  a  poor  result  of  so  much  figuring  and  flourishing, 
to  end  in  a  general  truth  which  can  give  no  offence  even  in 
Manchester. 

Soon  after  the  publication  of  Todt's  book,  Stocker  and  some 
Evangelical  friends  founded  two  associations,  for  the  purpose 
of  dealing  with  the  social  question  from  a  Christian  point  of 
view,  and  established  a  newspaper,  the  Staafs-Socialist,  to 
advocate  their  opinions.  Of  the  two  associations,  one,  the 
Central  Union  for  Social  Reform,  was  composed  of  persons 
belonging  to  the  educated  classes — professors,  manufacturers, 
landowners,  and  clergymen ;  and  the  other,  the  Christian 
Social  "Working  Men's  Party,  consisted  of  working  men  alone. 
This  movement  was  received  on  all  sides  with  unqualified  dis- 
approbation. The  press,  Liberal  and  Conservative  alike,  spoke 
with  contemptuous  dislike  of  this  Muckei'-Socialhmus,  and 
said  they  preferred  the  socialists  in  blouse  to  the  socialists  in 
surplice.  The  Social  Democrats  rose  against  it  with  vii'ulence, 
and  held  meetings,  both  of  men  and  of  women,  at  which  they 
glorified  atheism  and  bitterly  attacked  the  clergy  and  religion. 
Even  the  higher  dignitaries  of  the  Church  held  coldly  aloof  or 
were  even  openly  hostile.  Stocker  met  all  this  opposition  with 
unflinching  spirit,  convened  public  meetings  in  Berlin  to  pro- 
mote his  cause,  and  confronted  the  socialist  leaders  on  the  plat- 
form. The  movement  gave  promise  of  fair  success.  In  a  few 
months  seven  hundred  pastors,  besides  many  from  other  pro- 
fessions, including  Dr.  Koegel,  Court  preacher,  and  Dr.  Buchsel, 
a  German  Superintendent,  had  enrolled  themselves  in  the 
Central  Union  for  Social  Reform  ;  and  the  Christian  Social 
Working  Men's  Party  had  seventeen  hundred  members  in 
Berlin,  and  a  considerable  number  throughout  the  provinces. 
But  its  progress  was  interrupted  by  the  Anti-Socialist  Law, 
passed  soon  after  the  same  year,  which  put  an  end  to  meetings 
of  socialists ;  and  since  this  measure  was  supported,  though 
hesitatingly,  by  Stocker  and  his  leading  allies,  that  impaired 
their  influence  with  the  labouring  classes. 

The  principles  of  this  party,  as  stated  in  their  programme, 
may  be  said  generally  to  be  that  a  decided  social  question 


240  Contemporary  Socialism. 

exists,  in  the  increasing  gulf  between  ricli  and  poor,  and  the 
increasing  want  of  economic  security  in  the  labourer's  life; 
that  this  question  cannot  possibly  be  solved  by  social  demo- 
cracy, because  social  democracy  is  unpractical,  unchristian, 
and  unpatriotic  ;  and  that  it  can  only  be  solved  by  means 
of  an  extensive  intervention  on  the  part  of  a  strong  and 
monarchical  State,  aided  by  the  religious  factors  in  the 
national  life.  The  State  ought  to  provide  by  statute  a 
regular  organization  of  the  working  classes  according  to  their 
trades,  authorizing  the  trades  unions  to  represent  the  labourers 
as  against  their  employers,  rendering  these  unions  legally 
liable  for  the  contracts  entered  into  by  their  members,  assum- 
ing a  control  of  their  funds,  regulating  the  apprentice  system, 
creating  compulsory  insurance  funds,  etc.  Then  it  ought  to 
protect  the  labourers  by  prohibiting  Sunday  labour,  by  fixing 
a  normal  day  of  labour,  and  by  insisting  on  the  sound  sanitary 
condition  of  workshops.  Further,  it  ought  to  manage  the 
State  and  communal  property  in  a  spirit  favourable  to  the 
working  class,  and  to  introduce  high  luxury  taxes,  a  progressive 
income-tax,  and  a  progressive  legacy  duty,  both  according  to 
extent  of  bequest  and  distance  of  relationship.  These  very 
comprehensive  reforms  are,  however,  held  to  be  inadequate 
without  the  spread  of  a  Christian  spirit  of  mutual  consideration 
into  the  relations  of  master  and  workman,  and  of  Christian 
faith,  hope,  and  love  into  family  life.  Moreover  they  are  not 
to  be  expected  from  a  parliamentary  government  in  which  the 
commercial  classes  have  excessive  influence,  and  hence  the 
Christian  Socialists  lay  great  stress  on  the  monarchical  element, 
and  would  give  the  monarch  absolute  power  to  introduce  social 
reforms  without  parliamentary  co-operation  and  even  in  face 
of  parliamentary  opposition.  "We  have  seen  that  Todt  was 
disposed  to  favour  a  republican  form  of  government,  but 
probably,  like  the  Czar  Nicholas,  he  has  no  positive  objection 
to  any  other  save  the  constitutional.  His  part}--  has  certainly 
adopted  a  very  Radical  social  programme,  but  it  is  above  all  a 
Conservative  group,  seeking  to  resist  the  revolutionary  and 
materialistic  tendencies  of  socialism,  and  to  rally  the  great 
German  working  class  once  more  round  the  standard  of  God, 
King,  and  Fatherland. 


The  Christian  Socialists.  241 

Dr.  Stocker  lias  during  the  past  year  resuscitated  his 
Christian  Socialist  organization  under  the  name  of  the  Social 
Monarchical  Union,  but  without  any  prospect  of  much  success ; 
for  its  founder,  as  the  result  of  his  twelve  years'  bustling  in 
the  troubled  waters  of  politics,  has  fallen  out  of  favour  alike 
with  court,  Church,  and  people.  He  has  lost  his  place  as  royal 
chaplain,  he  is  bitterly  distrusted  by  the  working  classes,  and 
his  socialist  opinions  are  a  great  rock  of  offence  to  his  eccle- 
siastical brethren.  A  congress  under  Church  auspices  was 
held  at  Berlin  on  May  28th  and  29th,  1890,  and  it  was  called 
the  Evangelical  Social  Congress,  as  was  explained  by  Professor 
A.  Wagner,  the  economist,  in  his  inaugural  speech,  to  avoid 
being  connected  with  the  Christian  Socialists.  Dr.  Stocker  read 
a  paper  at  it  on  social  democracy,  which  raised  a  storm  of  dis- 
sension, mainly  for  its  attack  upon  the  Jews.  This  congress, 
it  may  be  noted,  asked  nothing  from  Government  but  a  little 
attention  to  the  housing  of  the  poor,  and  its  chief  recommenda- 
tions were  (1)  that  every  parish  be  organized  under  the  social- 
political  as  well  as  spiritual  supervision  of  the  clergy ;  (2)  that 
Evangelical  Working  Men's  Unions  be  established  in  all  indus- 
trial centres  ;  (3)  that  benevolent  or  friendly  societies  be  orga- 
nized for  all  trades,  such  as  exist  now  in  mining ;  (4)  that  since 
social  democracy  threatened  the  Divine  and  human  order  of 
society,  and  could  only  be  successfully  opposed  by  the  power  of 
the  gospel,  a  responsible  mission  lay  upon  the  Church  to  com- 
bat and  counteract  it.  This  mission  was  to  be  accomplished 
in  two  ways  :  first,  by  awakening  in  all  Evangelical  circles  the 
conviction  that  the  present  social  crisis  was  due  to  a  universal 
national  guilt,  the  guilt  of  materialistic  learning  and  living ; 
and,  second,  by  awakening  masters  to  a  sense  of  their  duty  to 
their  men,  as  morally  their  equals,  and  by  awakening  the  men 
to  a  sense  of  the  moral  vocation  of  the  masters.  In  other  words, 
the  social  mission  of  the  Church,  according  to  the  dominant 
opinion  at  this  congress,  was  just  to  do  its  ordinary  work  of 
preaching  repentance,  faith,  and  love,  and  was  much  better 
represented  by  Dr.  Stocker's  Home  Missionary  Society  than  by 
his  Social  Monarchical  Union. 

On  this  question  of  the  duty  of  the  Church  with  regard  to 
the  social  amelioration  of  the  people,  there  are  everywhere  two 


242  Contemporary  Socialism. 

opposite  tendencies  of  opinion.  One  says  there  is  no  specific 
Christian  social  politics,  and  that  the  Church  can  never  have 
a  specific  social-political  programme.  Slavery'-  is  undoubtedly 
inconsistent  with  the  moral  spirit  of  the  gospel,  but  St.  Paul 
was  not  an  emancipationist  in  practical  life.  He  neither  raises 
the  question  of  emancipation  as  a  matter  of  political  agitation, 
nor  does  he  bid,  or  beg,  hi^  friend  Philemon  to  set  Onesimus 
at  liberty,  but  to  receive  him  as  a  brother  beloved ;  just  as 
any  of  St.  Paul's  successors  might  enjoin  a  Christian  master 
to  treat  his  Christian  servant.  Christianity  is  an  inspiration, 
and  may  be  expected  to  change  the  character  of  social  relations 
as  it  changes  the  character  of  men ;  but  political  programmes 
are  always  things  of  opportunity  and  temporary  compromise, 
and  it  would  be  very  unadvisable  to  run  at  any  moment  a 
Christian  political  party,  because  it  would  necessarily  make 
Christianity  responsible  for  imperfections  incident  to  party 
politics,  and  lessen  rather  than  help  the  weight  of  its  testimony 
in  the  world. 

Then,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  those  who  hold  that  there 
is  a  specific  Christian  social  politics ;  that  there  is  a  distinct 
social  and  political  system,  either  directly  enjoined  by  Holy 
"Writ,  or  inferentially  resulting  from  it,  so  as  to  be  truly  a 
system  of  Divine  right.  That  is  the  claim  put  forward  by  Dr. 
Stocker  for  his  system  of  social  monarchy,  and  it  is  the  position 
of  sundry  other  groups  of  socialists,  who  base  their  policy  on  the 
agrarian  ordinances  of  Moses,  or  the  communism  of  the  primi- 
tive Churches,  or  the  general  spirit  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
Christ.  But  Christian  Socialism,  in  any  of  these  forms,  is  evi- 
dently at  a  discount  in  the  Evangelical  Church  in  Germany ; 
and  the  representative  men  in  that  Church,  whatever  they 
may  do  as  private  citizens,  would  seem  to  refrain,  perhaps  too 
jealously,  from  formulating  in  the  name  of  religion  any  demands 
for  the  action  of  the  State  in  the  social  question. 

Indeed,,  among  Protestants,  what  is  called  Christian  Social- 
ism is  little  more  than  a  vagrant  opinion  in  any  country  ,  but 
among  Catholics  it  has  grown  into  a  considerable  international 
movement,  and  has  in  several  States — especially  in  Austria — 
left  its  mark  on  legislation.  The  movement  was  started  in 
Austria  by  a  Protestant,  Herr  Eudolph  Meyer,  the  well-known 


The  Christian  Socialists  243 

author  of  tlie  " Emancipationskampf  des  Arbeit"  and  other 
works ;  but  he  was  influentially  and  effectively  seconded  by 
Prince  von  Liechtenstein,  Counts  Blome  and  Kuefstein,  and 
Herr  von  Vogelsang,  who  is  now  editor  of  the  special  organ  of 
the  movement,  the  Vaterland,  of  Vienna.  In  France  there  had 
long  been  a  school  of  Catholic  social  reformers,  the  disciples  of 
the  Economist  Le  Play,  and  they  are  still  associated  in  the 
Society  of  Social  Peace,  and  advocate  their  views  in  the  perio- 
dical La  Eeforme  Sociale.  They  are  believers  in  liberty,  how- 
ever, and  would  not  be  called  socialists.  But  there  are  now 
two  newer  schools  of  Catholic  social  reformers,  who  declare  their 
aim  to  be  the  re-establishment  of  Christian  principles  in  the 
world  of  labour,  but  are  divided  on  the  point  of  State  interven- 
tion. 

The  school  who  believe  in  State  intervention  are  the  more 
numerous  ;  they  are  led  by  Count  Albert  de  Mun  and  the 
Marquis  de  la  Tour  de  Pin  Chambly,  have  a  separate  organ, 
L Association  Catholiqne,  and  are  supported  by  a  large  organi- 
zation of  Catholic  workmen's  clubs,  founded  by  Count  de 
Mun.  There  were  450  of  these  clubs  in  1880,  and  they  com- 
bine the  functions  of  a  religious  club,  a  co-operative  store,  and 
a  friendly  society.  The  school  who  uphold  the  principle  of 
liberty  also  publish  an  organ,  L'  Union  Economique,  edited  by 
the  Franciscan  Father  le  Basse,  and  their  best  known  leaders 
are  two  Jesuit  priests.  Fathers  Forbes  and  Caldron.  There  is 
likewise  a  Catholic  Socialist  movement  in  Switzerland  and 
Belgium,  in  both  cases  strongly  in  favour  of  State  intervention; 
and,  indeed,  Italy  is  the  only  Catholic  country  in  which  the 
Church  holds  aloof  from  the  social  movement,  forgetting  the 
unusual  miseries  of.  the  people  in  an  ignoble  sulk  over  the  loss 
of  the  Pope's  temporal  power. 

The  friends  of  this  movement  have  now  held  three  inter- 
national congresses  at  Liege.  The  third  was  held  in  Septem- 
ber, 1890,  under  the  presidency  of  the  bishop  of  the  diocese, 
and  was  attended  by  1500  delegates,  including  eight  or  ten 
bishops  and  many  Catholic  statesmen  and  peers  from  all 
countries.  Lord  Ashburnham  and  the  Bishops  of  Salford  and 
Nottingham  represented  England,  and  there  were  representa- 
tives from  Germany,  Poland,  Austria,  Spain,  and  France,  but 


244  Contemporary  Socialism. 

none  from  Italy.  The  Pope  himself  sent  a  special  envoy  with 
an  address,  and  among  letters  from  eminent  Catholic  leaders 
who  were  unable  to  be  present  in  person  was  one  from  Cardinal 
Manning,  which  made  a  little  sensation,  but  was  received  with 
decided  sympathy,  though  the  Pope  afterwards  disavowed  it 
to  some  extent.  The  Cardinal  expressed  strong  approval  of 
trade  unions,  and  of  State  intervention  to  fix  the  hours  of 
labour  to  eight  hours  for  miners  and  ten  hours  for  less  arduous 
trades,  and  he  declared  his  conviction  that  no  pacific  solution  of 
the  conflict  between  capital  and  labour  was  possible  till  the 
State  regulated  profits  and  wages  according  to  some  fixed  scale 
which  should  be  subject  to  revision  every  three  or  four  years, 
and  by  which  all  free  contracts  between  employers  and 
employed  should  be  adjusted. 

The  Congress  went  over  the  whole  gamut  of  social  questions, 
and  exhibited  the  usual  conflict  of  opinion  between  the  party 
of  liberty  and  the  party  of  authority ;  but  the  party  of 
authority,  the  "  Statolaters  "  as  they  are  called,  had  evidently 
the  great  majority  of  the  assembly.  The  party  of  liberty 
were  chiefly  Frenchmen  and  Belgians,  men  like  Fathers 
Forbes  and  Caudron,  already  mentioned,  or  M.  Woeste,  the 
leader  of  the  Catholic  party  in  Belgium,  who  said  he  believed 
in  moral  suasion  only,  and  that  he  feared  the  State  and  hated 
CsBsarism.  The  party  of  authority  were  German  and  English. 
But  whatever  they  thought  of  State  intervention,  all  parties 
were  one  about  the  necessity  of  Church  intervention.  With- 
out the  Catholic  Church  there  could  be  no  solution  of  the 
social  question.  Cardinal  Manning  said,  a  few  days  before  the 
Congress,  that  the  labour  question  now  raised  everywhere 
must  go  on  till  it  was  solved  somehow,  and  that  the  only 
universal  influence  that  could  guide  it  was  the  presence  and 
prudence  of  the  Catholic  Church.  The  Congress  passed  recom- 
mendations about  technical  education,  better  homes  for  work- 
ing people,  shorter  hours,  intemperance,  strikes,  prison  labour, 
international  factory  legislation.  It  proposed  the  institution 
of  trade  unions,  comprising  both  employers  and  employed,  as 
the  best  means  of  promoting  working-class  improvement.  In 
the  towns  these  unions  might  have  distinct  sections  for  the 
different  trades ;  but  in  the  country  this  subdivision  was  not 


The  Christia7i  Socialists.  245 

requisite.  Every  parish  should  have  its  trade  union,  and  the 
whole  should  be  united  in  a  federation  like  the  Boerenbond, 
or  Peasants'  League,  lately  established  in  some  parts  of 
Belgium,  and  which  the  Congress  recommended  to  the  atten- 
tion of  Catholics.  It  recommended  also  the  establishment 
of  a  pension  fand  for  aged  labourers  under  State  guarantee, 
but  without  any  compulsory  exaction  of  premiums,  and  with- 
out any  special  State  subsidy ;  and  it  received  with  favour 
a  proposal  by  the  Spanish  divine.  Professor  Rodriguez  de 
Cegrada,  of  Valencia,  for  papal  arbitration  in  international 
labour  questions. 

This  Catholic  Socialist  movement  shows  no  disposition  to 
coquet  with  revolutionary  socialism ;  on  the  contrary,  its 
leaders  often  say  one  of  their  express  objects  is  to  counteract 
that  agitation — to  produce  the  counter-revolution,  as  they 
sometimes  put  it.  They  are  under  no  mistake  about  the 
nature  or  bearing  of  socialist  doctrines.  Our  Christian 
Socialists  in  London  accept  the  doctrines  of  Marx,  and  hold 
the  labourer's  right  to  the  full  product  of  his  labour  to  be  a 
requirement  of  Christian  ethics,  and  the  orators  at  English 
Church  Congresses  often  speak  of  socialism  as  if  it  were  a 
higher  perfection  of  Christianity.  But  Catholic  Socialists 
understand  their  Christianity  and  their  socialism  better  than 
to  make  any  such  identifications,  and  regard  the  doctrines  and 
organizations  of  revolutionary  socialism  in  the  spirit  of  the 
firm  judgment  expressed  in  the  Pope's  encyclical  of  28th 
December,  1878,  which  said  that  "  so  great  is  the  difference 
between  their  (the  socialists')  wicked  dogmas  and  the  pure 
doctrine  of  Christ  that  there  can  be  no  greater  ;  for  what  par- 
ticipation has  justice  with  injustice,  or  what  communion  has 
light  with  darkness  ?  "  This  plain,  gruff  renunciation  is  on 
the  whole  much  truer  than  the  amiable  patronage  of  a  very  dis- 
tinguished Irish  bishop  at  the  Church  Congress  of  1887,  who  said 
socialism  was  only  a  product  of  Christian  countries,  (what  of  the 
socialism  of  savage  tribes,  or  of  the  Mahdi,  or  of  the  Chinese  ?j 
that  the  sentiment  and  aspiration  of  socialism  were  distinctly 
Christian,  and  that  every  Christian  is  a  bit  of  a  socialist,  and 
every  socialist  a  bit  of  a  Christian.  Socialism  may  proceed 
from  an  aspiration  after  social  justice,  but  a  mistaken  view  of 


246  Contemporary  Socialism. 

social  justice  is,  I  presume,  really  injustice ;  and,  as  the  Pope 
says,  what  communion  can  there  practically  be  between  justice 
and  injustice  ?  Idolatry  is  a  mistaken  view  of  Divine  things — ■ 
a  distortion  of  the  religious  sentiment ;  but  who  would  on  that 
account  call  it  Christian  ?  The  socialist  may  be  at  heart  a 
lover  of  justice  ;  he  may  love  it,  if  you  will,  above  his  fellows ; 
but  what  matters  the  presence  of  the  sentiment  if  the  system 
he  would  realize  it  by  is  ruled  essentially  by  a  principle  of 
injustice?  Justice,  the  greatest  and  rarest  of  the  virtues,  is 
also  the  most  difficult  and  the  most  easily  perverted.  It  needs 
a  balance  of  mind,  and  in  its  application  to  complicated  and 
wide-reaching  social  arrangements,  an  exactitude  of  knowledge 
and  clearness  of  understanding  which  are  ill  replaced  by 
sentimental! sm,  or  even  by  honest  feeling ;  and  the  fault  of 
the  current  talk  about  Christian  Socialism  and  the  identity 
of  socialism  with  Christianity  is  that  it  does  not  conduce  to 
this  clearness  of  understanding,  which  is  the  first  requisite  for 
any  useful  dealing  with  such  questions.  If  socialism  is  just, 
it  is  Christian — that  seems  the  sum  of  the  matter.  But  do 
socializing  bishops  believe  it  to  be  just?  Do  they  believe, 
as  all  socialists  believe,  that  it  is  unjust  for  one  man  to  be  paid 
five  thousand  pounds  a  year,  while  his  neighbours,  with  far 
harder  and  more  drudging  work,  cannot  make  forty  pounds  ? 
or  do  they  believe  it  wrong  for  a  man  to  live  on  interest,  or 
rents,  or  profits  ?  or  would  they  have  the  law  lay  its  hands 
on  property  and  manufactures,  in  order  to  correct  this  wrong 
and  give  every  man  the  income  to  which  he  would  be  entitled 
on  socialist  principles?  It  is  good,  no  doubt,  to  have  more 
equality  and  simplicity  and  security  of  living ;  but  these  as- 
pirations are  neither  pecuhar  to  Christianity  nor  to  socialism. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

ANARCHISM. 

The  latest  offspring  of  revolutionary  opinion — and  tlie  most 
misshapen — is  anarchism.  Seven  or  eight  years  ago  the  word 
was  scarcely  known ;  but  then,  as  if  on  a  sudden,  rumours  of 
the  anarchists  and  their  horrid  "  propaganda  of  deed  "  echoed 
in,  one  upon  another,  from  almost  every  country  in  the  old 
world  and  the  new.  To-day  they  were  haranguing  mobs  of 
unemployed  in  Lyons  and  Brussels  under  a  black  flag — the 
black  flag  of  hunger,  which,  they  explained,  knows  no  law. 
To-morrow  they  were  goading  the  peasants  of  Lombardy  or 
Naples  to  attack  the  country  houses  of  the  gentry,  and  lay 
the  vineyards  waste.  Presently  they  were  found  attempting 
to  assassinate  the  German  Emperor  at  Niederwald,  or  laying 
dynamite  against  the  Federal  Palace  at  Bern ;  or  a  troop  of 
them  had  set  off  over  Europe  on  a  quixotic  expedition  of  miscel- 
laneous revenge  on  powers  that  be,  and  were  reported  succes- 
sively as  having  killed  a  gendarme  in  Strasburg,  a  policeman 
in  Vienna,  and  a  head  of  the  constabulary  in  Frankfort.  Before 
these  reports  had  time  to  die  in  our  ears,  fresh  tales  would  arrive 
of  anarchists  pillaging  the  bakers'  shops  in  Paris,  or  exulting 
over  the  murder  of  a  mining  manager  at  Decazeville,  or  fling- 
ing bombs  among  the  police  of  Chicago ;  and  it  seemed  as  if  a 
new  party  of  disorder  had  broke  loose  upon  the  world,  busier 
and  more  barbarous  than  any  that  went  before  it. 

It  is  no  new  party,  however;  it  is  merely  the  extremer 
element  in  the  modern  socialist  movement.  Mr.  Hyndman 
and  other  socialists  would  fain  disclaim  the  anarchists  alto- 
gether, and  are  fond  of  declaring  that  they  are  the  very 
opposite  of  socialists — that  they  are  individualists  of  the 
boldest  stamp.  But  this  contention  will  not  stand.  There 
are  individualist    anarchists,   no   doubt.      The   anarchists    of 

247 


248  Conte77iporary  Socialism. 

Boston,  in  America,  are  individualists  ;  one  of  the  two  groups 
of  English  anarchists  in  London  is  individualist ;  but  these 
individualist  anarchists  are  very  few  in  number  anywhere,  and 
the  mass  of  the  party  whose  deeds  made  a  stir  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic  is  undoubtedly  more  socialist  than  the  socialists 
themselves.  I  have  said  in  a  previous  chapter  that  the 
socialism  of  the  present  day  maybe  correctly  described, in  three 
words  as  Revolutionary  Socialist  Democracy,  and  in  every  one 
of  these  three  characteristics  the  anarchists  go  beyond  other 
socialists,  instead  of  falling  short  of  them.  They  are  really 
more  socialist,  more  democratic,  and  more  revolutionary  than  the 
rest  of  their  comrades.  They  are  more  socialist,  because  they 
are  disposed  to  want  not  only  common  property  and  common 
production,  but  common  enjoyment  of  products  as  well.  They 
are  more  democratic,  because  they  will  have  no  government 
of  any  kind  over  the  people  except  the  people  themselves — 
no  king  or  committee,  no  representative  institutions,  either 
imperial  or  local,  but  merely  every  little  industrial  group  of 
people  managing  its  public  affairs  as  it  will  manage  its  indus- 
trial work.  And  they  are  more  revolutionary,  for  they  have 
no  faith,  even  temporarily,  in  constitutional  procedure,  and 
think  making  a  little  trouble  is  always  the  best  way  of  bring- 
ing on  a  big  revolution.  Other  socialists  prepare  the  way  for 
revolution  by  a  propaganda  of  word ;  but  the  anarchists 
believe  they  can  hasten  the  day  best  by  the  propaganda  of 
deed.  Like  the  violent  sections  of  all  other  parties,  they 
injure  and  discredit  the  party  they  belong  to,  and  they  often 
attack  the  more  moderate  section  with  greater  bitterness  than 
their  common  enemy ;  but  they  certainly  belong  to  social- 
ism, both  in  origin  and  in  principle.  There  were  anarchists 
among  the  Young  Hegelian  socialists  of  Germany  fifty  years 
ago.  The  Anti-socialist  Laws  bred  a  swarm  of  anarchists 
among  the  German  socialists  in  1880,  who  left  under  Most  and 
Hasselmann,  and  carried  to  America  the  seed  which  led  to  the 
outrages  of  Chicago.  The  Russian  nihilists  were  anarchists 
from  the  beginning;  they  broke  up  the  International  with 
their  anarchism  twenty  years  ago,  and  they  are  among  the 
chief  disseminators  of  anarchism  in  England  and  France  to- 
day, because  to  the  Russians  anarchism  is  only  the  socialism 


Anarchism.  249 

and  the  democracy  of  the  rural  communes  in  which  they  were 
born.  Socialists  themselves  are  often  obliged  to  admit  the 
embarrassing  affinity.  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Aveling  complain,  in  their 
"  Labour  Movement  in  America,"  that  while  "  the  Chicago 
capitalist  wanted  us  to  be  hanged  after  we  had  landed,  Herr 
Most's  paper,  Die  Freiheif,  was  for  shooting  us  at  sight "  ;  that 
"  anarchism  ruined  the  International  movement,  threw  back 
the  Spanish,  Italian,  and  French  movements  for  many  years, 
has  proved  a  hindrance  in  America,  and  so  much  or  so  little 
of  it  as  exists  in  England  is  found  by  the  revolutionary 
socialist  party  a  decided  nuisance"  ;  but  they  admit  that  "  well 
nigh  every  word  spoken  by  the  chief  defendants  at  the  Chicago 
trial  could  be  endorsed  by  socialists,  for  they  then  preached 
not  anarchism,  but  socialism.  Indeed,"  they  add,  "  he  that 
will  compare  the  fine  speech  by  Parsons  in  1886  with  that  of 
Liebknecht  at  the  high  treason  trial  at  Leipzig  will  find  the 
two  practically  identical." 

So  far,  then,  as  their  socialism  goes,  there  is  admittedly  no 
real  difference  between  Parsons,  the  Chicago  anarchist,  and 
Liebknecht,  the  leader  of  the  Grerman  socialists.  Indeed,  as  I 
have  said,  the  anarchists  seem  to  show  a  tendency  even  to  out- 
bid the  socialists  in  their  socialism.  Socialists  generally  say 
that,  while  committing  all  production  to  the  public  authority, 
they  have  no  idea  of  interfering  with  liberty  of  consumption. 
Their  opponents  argue,  in  reply,  that  they  would  find  an  inter- 
ference with  consumption  to  be  an  inevitable  result  of  their 
systematic  regulation  of  production;  but  they  themselves  always 
repudiate  that  conclusion.  They  would  make  all  the  instru- 
ments of  production  common  property,  but  leave  all  the 
materials  of  enjoyment  individual  property  still.  Ground 
rents,  for  example,  would  belong  to  the  public  ;  but  every  man 
would  own  his  own  house  and  furniture,  at  least  for  life,  if  he 
had  built  it  by  his  own  labour,  or  bought  it  from  his  own 
savings,  because  a  dwelling  house  is  not  an  instrument  of  pro- 
duction,  but  an  article  of  enjoyment  or  consumption.  But  some 
of  the  more  representative  spokesmen  of  the  anarchists  would 
not  leave  this  last  remnant  of  private  property  standing,  and 
strongly  contend  for  the  old  primitive  plan,  still  in  use  among 
savage  tribes,  of  giving  those  who  are  in  want  of  anything  a 


250  Contemporary  Socialism. 

claim — a  right — to  share  the  enjoyment  of  it  with  those  who 
happen  to  have  it.  They  would  municipalize  the  houses  as 
well  as  the  ground  rents,  and  no  one  should  be  allowed  a  right 
to  a  spare  bed  or  a  disengaged  sofa  so  long  as  one  of  the  least 
of  his  brethren  huddled  on  straw  in  a  garret  in  the  slums,  or 
slept  out  on  a  bench  in  Trafalgar  Square.  In  a  recent  number 
of  Freedom^  for  example,  Prince  Krapotkin  announces  that 
"  the  first  task  of  the  Revolution  will  be  to  arrange  things  so 
as  to  share  the  accommodation  of  available  houses  according  to 
the  needs  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  city,  to  clear  out  the  slums 
and  fully  occupy  the  villas  and  mansions."  Anarchist  opinions 
are  no  doubt  capricious  and  variable.  There  are  as  many 
anarchisms  as  there  are  anarchists,  it  has  been  said.  But  this 
tendency  to  go  further  than  other  socialists,  in  superseding  in- 
dividual by  common  property,  has  repeatedly  appeared  in  some 
of  their  most  representative  utterances. 

The  Jurassian  Federation  of  the  International  adopted  a  reso- 
lution at  their  Congress  in  1880,  in  which  they  say :  "  We 
desire  collectivism,  with  all  its  logical  consequences,  not  only  in 
the  sense  of  the  collective  appropriation  of  instruments  of  pro- 
duction, but  also  of  the  collective  enjoyment  and  consumption 
of  products.  Anarchist  communism  will  in  this  way  be  the 
necessary  and  inevitable  consequence  of  the  social  revolution, 
and  the  expression  of  the  new  civilization  which  that  revolution 
will  inaugurate." 

Their  principal  difference  with  the  other  branch  of  the 
socialists,  however, — and  that  from  which  they  derive  their 
name — is  upon  the  government  of  the  socialistic  society.  An- 
archy as  a  principle  of  political  philosophy  was  first  advocated 
by  Proudhon,  and  he  meant  by  it,  not  of  course  a  state  of  chaos 
or  disorder,  but  merely  a  state  without  separate  political  or  civil 
institutions, — "  a  state  of  order  without  a  set  government." 
"  The  expression,  anarchic  government,"  he  says,  "  implies  a 
sort  of  contradiction.  The  thing  seems  impossible,  and  the 
idea  absurd ;  but  there  is  really  nothing  at  fault  here  but  the 
language.  The  idea  of  anarchy  in  politics  is  quite  as  rational  and 
positive  as  any  other.  It  consists  in  this, — that  the  political 
function  be  re-absorbed  in  the  industrial,  and  in  that  case  social 
order  would  ensue  spontaneously  out  of  the  simple  operation  of 


Anarchism.  251 

transactions  and  exchanges.  Every  man  might  then  be  justly 
called  autocrat  of  himself,  which  is  the  extreme  reverse  of 
monarchical  absolutism  "  ("  Die  Princip  Federatif,"  p.  29).  He 
distinguishes  anarchy  from  democracy  and  from  communistic 
government,  though  his  distinctions  are  not  easy  to  apprehend 
exactly.  Communism,  he  says,  is  the  government  of  all  by  all ; 
democracy,  the  government  of  all  by  each ;  and  anarchy,  the 
government  of  each  by  each.  Anarchy  is,  in  his  opinion,  the 
only  real  form  of  self-government.  People  would  manage  their 
own  public  affairs  together  like  partners  in  a  business,  and  no 
one  would  be  subject  to  the  authority  of  another.  Govern- 
ment is  considered  a  mere  detail  of  industrial  management  ; 
and  the  industrial  management  is  considered  to  be  in  the 
hands  of  all  who  co-operate  in  the  industry.  The  specific 
preference  of  anarchism,  therefore,  seems  to  be  for  some  form 
of  direct  government  by  the  people,  in  place  of  any  form  of 
central,  superior,  or  representative  government ;  and  naturally 
its  political  communities  must  be  small  in  size,  though  they 
may  be  left  to  league  together,  if  they  choose,  in  free  and 
somewhat  loose  federations.  The  anarchists  are  accordingly 
more  democratic  in  their  political  theory  than  the  socialists 
more  strictly  so  called,  inasmuch  as  they  would  give  the 
people  more  hand  in  the  work  of  governmen'b,  though  of 
course  they  preposterously  underrate  the  need  and  difficulty  of 
that  work. 

On  some  minor  points  they  contradict  one  another,  and  quite 
as  often  contradict  themselves,  Proudhon,  for  example,  would 
still,  even  in  anarchist  society,  retain  the  local  policeman  and 
magistrate ;  but  anarchists  of  a  stricter  doctrine  would  either 
have  every  man  carry  his  own  pistol  and  provide  for  his  own 
security,  or,  as  the  Boston  anarchists  prefer,  apparently,  would 
have  public  security  supplied  like  any  other  commodity  by  an 
ordinary  mercantile  association — in  Proudhon's  words,  "  by 
the  simple  operation  of  transactions  and  exchanges."  Emerson 
said  the  day  was  coming  when  the  world  would  do  without 
the  paraphernalia  of  courts  and  parliaments,  and  a  man  who 
liked  the  profession  would  merely  put  a  sign  over  his  door, 
"  John  Smith,  King."  This  is  too  much  division  of  function 
however  for  anarchists  generally,  and  they  would  have  every 


252  Conteinporary  Socialism. 

industrial  group  do  its  government  as  it  did  its  business  by 
general  co-operation.  Just  as  in  Russia  every  rural  commune 
has  its  own  trade,  and  the  inhabitants  of  one  are  all  shoemakers, 
while  the  inhabitants  of  another  are  all  tailors,  so  in  anarchist 
society,  according  to  the  more  advanced  doctrine,  every  separate 
group  would  have  its  own  separate  industry,  because,  in  fact, 
the  separate  industry  makes  it  a  separate  group.  And  it  would 
be  managed  by  all  its  members  together,  not  by  anything  in 
the  nature  of  a  board,  for  it  is  important  to  recollect  that  anar- 
chists of  the  purest  water  entertain  as  much  objection  to  the 
domination  of  a  vestry  or  a  town  council  as  to  that  of  a  king 
or  a  cabinet.  Some  who  side  with  them,  especially  old  sup- 
porters of  the  French  Revolutionary  Commune,  have  still  a 
certain  belief  in  a  municipal  council ;  but  the  Russian  anar- 
chists, at  any  rate,  look  upon  this  as  a  piece  of  faithless  accom- 
modation. Prince  Krapotkin,  I  have  already  mentioned,  thinks 
the  first  business  of  the  contemplated  revolution  must  be  to 
redistribute  the  dwelling  houses,  so  as  to  thin  the  slums  and 
quarter  their  surplus  population  in  the  incompletely  occupied 
villas  or  mansions  of  the  West  End.  That  is  a  very  large  task, 
which  it  will  seem,  to  an  ordinary  mind,  obviously  impossible 
for  the  vast  population  of  a  great  city  like  London  to  execute  in 
their  own  proper  persons  at  an  enormous  town  meeting ;  yet, 
if  I  understand  Prince  Krapotkin,  it  is  this  preposterous  pro- 
posal he  is  actually  offering  as  a  serious  contribution  to  a  more 
perfect  system  of  government.  "  For,"  says  he,  "  sixty  elected 
persons  sitting  round  a  table  and  calling  themselves  a  Muni- 
cipal Council  cannot  arrange  the  matter  on  paper.  It  must  be 
arranged  by  the  people  themselves,  freely  uniting  to  settle  the 
question  for  each  block  of  houses,  each  street,  and  proceeding 
by  agreement  from  the  single  to  the  compound,  from  the  parts 
to  the  whole  ;  all  having  their  voice  in  the  arrangements,  and 
putting  in  their  claims  with  those  of  their  fellow-citizens ;  just 
as  the  Russian  peasants  settle  the  periodical  repartition  of  the 
communal  lands."  And  how  do  the  Russian  peasants  settle 
the  periodical  repartition  of  the  communal  lands?  Stepniak 
gives  us  a  very  interesting  description  of  a  meeting  of  a 
Russian  mir  in  his  "  Russia  Under  the  Tsars  "  (vol.  i.  p.  2). 
"  The  meetings  of  the  village  communes,  like  those  of  the 


Anarchism.  253 

Landesgemeinde  of  the  primitive  Swiss  cantons,  are  lield  under 
the  vault  of  heaven,  before  the  Starosta's  house,  before  a  tavern, 
or  at  any  other  convenient  place.  The  thing  that  most  strikes 
a  person  who  is  present  for  the  first  time  at  one  of  these  meet- 
ings is  the  utter  confusion  which  seems  to  characterize  its 
proceedings.  Chairman  there  is  none.  The  debates  are  scenes 
of  the  wildest  disorder.  After  the  convener  has  explained  his 
reasons  for  calling  the  meeting,  everybody  rushes  in  to  express 
his  opinion,  and  for  a  while  the  debate  resembles  a  free  fight 
of  pugilists.  The  right  of  speaking  belongs  to  him  who  can 
command  attention.  If  an  orator  pleases  his  audience,  inter- 
rupters are  promptly  silenced  ;  but  if  he  says  nothing  worth 
hearing,  nobody  heeds  him,  and  he  is  shut  up.  "When  the 
question  is  somewhat  of  a  burning  one,  and  the  meeting  begins 
to  grow  warmj  all  speak  at  once,  and  none  listen.  On  these 
occasions  the  assembly  breaks  up  into  groups,  each  of  which 
discusses  the  subject  on  its  own  account.  Everybody  shouts 
his  arguments  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  Charges  and  objurga- 
tions, words  of  contumely  and  derision,  are  heard  on  every 
hand,  and  a  wild  uproar  goes  on  from  which  it  does  not  seem 
possible  that  any  good  can  result, 

"But  this  apparent  confusion  is  of  no  moment.  It  is  a 
necessary  means  to  a  certain  end.  In  our  village  assemblies 
voting  is  unknown.  Controversies  are  never  decided  by  a 
majority  of  voices ;  every  question  must  be  settled  unanimously. 
Hence  the  general  debate,  as  well  as  private  discussions,  must 
be  continued  until  a  proposal  is  brought  forward  which  con- 
ciliates all  interests,  and  wins  the  suffrage  of  the  entire  mir. 
It  is,  moreover,  evident  that  to  reach  this  consummation  the 
debates  must  be  thorough  and  the  subject  well  threshed  out ; 
and  in  order  to  overcome  isolated  opposition,  it  is  essential  for 
the  advocates  of  conflicting  views  to  be  brought  face  to  face, 
and  compelled  to  fight  out  their  differences  in  single  combat," 

But  beneath  all  this  tough  and  apparently  acrimonious  strife 
a  singular  spirit  of  forbearance  reigns.  The  majority  will  not 
force  on  a  premature  decision.  Debate  may  rage  fast  and 
furious  day  after  day,  but  at  last  the  din  dies,  A  common 
understanding  is  somehow  attained,  and  the  mir  pronounces 
its  deliverance,  which  is  accepted,  in  the  rude  belief  of  the 


2  54  Contemporary  Socialism. 

peasants,  as  the  decree  of  God  Himself.  In  this  way  tens  of 
thousands  of  Russian  villages  have  been,  no  doubt,  managing 
their  own  petty  business  with  reasonable  amity  and  success 
for  centuries,  and  the  political  philosophy  of  Russian  writers 
like  Bakunin  and  Prince  Krapotkin,  who  have  propagated 
anarchism  in  the  west  of  Europe,  is  merely  the  naive  sugges- 
tion that  the  form  of  government  which  answers  not  intoler- 
ably for  the  few  trivial  concerns  of  a  primitive  Russian  village 
would  answer  best  for  the  whole  complex  business  of  a  great 
developed  modern  society. 

The  anarchists  carry  their  dislike  to  authority  into  other 
fields  besides  the  political  and  industrial.  They  will  have  no 
invisible  master  or  ruler  any  more  than  visible.  They  renounce 
both  God  and  the  devil,  and  generally  with  an  energy  beyond 
all  other  revolutionists.  Some  of  the  older  socialists  were 
believers ;  St.  Simon,  Fourier,  Leroux  and  Louis  Blanc  were 
all  theists ;  but  it  is  rare  to  find  one  among  the  socialists  of 
the  present  generation,  and  with  the  anarchists  an  aggressive 
atheism  seems  an  essential  part  of  their  way  of  thinking.  They 
will  own  no  superior  power  or  authority  of  any  kind — employer, 
ruler,  deity,  or  law.  The  Anarchist  Congress  of  Geneva  in 
1882  issued  a  manifesto,  which  began  thus : — 

"  Our  enemy,  it  is  our  master.  Anarchists — that  is  to  say, 
men  without  chiefs — we  fight  against  all  who  are  invested  or 
wish  to  invest  themselves  with  any  kind  of  power  whatsoever. 
Our  enemy  is  the  landlord  who  owns  the  soil  and  makes  the 
peasant  drudge  for  his  profit.  Our  enemy  is  the  employer  who 
owns  the  workshop,  and  has  filled  it  with  wage-serfs.  Our 
enemy  is  the  State,  monarchical,  oligarchic,  democratic,  work- 
ing class,  with  its  functionaries  and  its  services  of  officers,  magis- 
trates, and  police.  Our  enemy  is  every  abstract  authority', 
whether  called  Devil  or  Good  God,  in  the  name  of  which  priests 
have  so  long  governed  good  souls.  Our  enemy  is  the  law,  always 
made  for  the  oppression  of  the  weak  by  the  strong,  and  for  the 
justification  and  consecration  of  crime." 

Among  other  restraints,  they  entertain  often,  a  speculative 
opposition  to  the  restraint  of  the  legal  family,  and  sometimes 
advocate  a  return  to  aboriginal  promiscuity  and  relationship  by 
mothers ;  but  this  is  only  an  occasional  element  in  their  agita- 


Anarchism.  255 

tion.     It  is  plain,  however,  that  when  law  is  believed  to  be 
oppression,  crime  and  lawlessness  come  to  be  humanity. 

I  have  now  shown  that  the  anarchists,  so  far  from  represent- 
ing an  opposite  movement  to  revolutionary  social  democracy, 
are  really  ultra-socialist  and  ultra-democratic,  and  it  seems 
hardly  necessary  to  show  that  they  are  ultra-revolutionary. 
All  social  democrats  contemplate  an  eventual  revolution,  but 
some  see  no  objection  meanwhile  to  take  part  in  current 
pohtics ;  while  others,  a  more  witnessing  generation,  practise 
an  ostentatious  abstention,  and  call  themselves  political  absten- 
tionists.  Some,  again,  think  and  desire  that  the  revolution  will 
come  by  peaceful  and  lawful  means  ;  others  trust  to  violence 
alone.  The  anarchists  outrun  all.  They  refuse  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  any  politics  but  revolution,  and  with  any 
revolution  but  a  violent  one,  and  they  think  the  one  means  of 
producing  revolution  now  or  at  any  future  time  is  simply  to 
keep  exciting  disorder  and  class  hatred,  assassinating  State 
officers,  setting  fire  to  buildings,  and  paralyzing  the  bourgeoisie 
with  fear.  All  anarchists  are  not  of  this  sanguinary  mind, 
and  it  is  interesting  to  remember  that  Proudhon  himself 
wrote  Karl  Marx  in  1846,  warning  him  against  "  making  a 
St.  Bartholomew  of  the  proprietors,"  and  opposed  resort  to 
revolutionary  action  of  any  kind  as  a  means  of  promoting 
social  reform.  "  Perhaps,"  he  says,  "  we  think  no  reform  is 
possible  without  a  coup  de  main,  without  what  used  to  be  called 
a  revolution,  and  which  is  only  a  shake,  I  understand  that 
decision  and  excuse  it,  for  I  held  it  for  a  long  time  myself,  but 
I  confess  my  latest  studies  have  completely  taken  it  away  from 
me.  I  believe  we  have  no  need  of  any  such  thing  in  order  to 
succeed,  and  that  consequently  we  ought  not  to  postulate 
revolutionary  action  as  a  means  of  social  reform,  because  that 
pretended  means  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  an  appeal 
to  force,  to  arbitrary  power,  and  is  therefore  a  contradiction, 
I  state  the  problem  thus :  to  restore  to  society,  by  an  economic 
combination,  the  wealth  which  has  been  taken  from  society 
by  another  economic  combination."  ("Proudhon's  Corre- 
spondence," ii.  198.) 

But  whatever  individual  anarchists  may  hold  or  renounce, 
the  general  view  of  the  party  is  as  I  have  stated.     A  meeting 


256  Contemporary  Socialism. 

of  600  anarchists — chiefly  Germans  and  Austrians,  but  includ- 
ing also  some  Russians,  Spaniards,  and  Frenchmen — was  held 
at  Paris  on  the  20th  April,  1884,  and  passed  a  resolution  urgently 
recommending  the  extirpation  of  princes,  capitalists,  and  par- 
sons, by  means  of  "  the  propaganda  of  deed."*  The  Congress 
held  at  London  in  1881,  which  sought  to  re-establish  the  Inter- 
national on  purely  anarchist  lines,  adopted  a  declaration  of 
principles,  containing,  among  other  things,  the  following :  "  It 
is  matter  of  strict  necessity  to  make  all  possible  efforts  to 
propagate  by  deeds  the  revolutionary  idea  and  the  spirit  of 
revolt  among  that  great  section  of  the  mass  of  the  people  which 
as  yet  takes  no  part  in  the  movement,  and  entertains  illusions 
about  the  morality  and  efficacy  of  legal  means.  In  quitting 
the  legal  ground  on  which  we  have  generally  remained 
hitherto,  in  order  to  carry  our  action  into  the  domain  of 
illegality  which  is  the  only  way  leading  to  revolution,  it  is 
necessary  to  have  recourse  to  means  which  are  in  conformity 
with  that  end.  .  .  .  The  Congress  recommends  organiza- 
tions and  individuals  constituting  part  of  the  International 
Working  Men's  Association  to  give  great  weight  to  the  study 
of  the  technical  and  chemical  sciences  as  a  means  of  defence 
and  attack."t  In  the  first  French  revolution  Lavoisier  and 
other  seven  and  twenty  chemists  were  put  to  the  guillotine 
together,  on  the  express  pretence,  "  "We  have  no  need  of 
savants ^^ ;  but  now  "Technology"  is  a  standing  heading  in 
the  anarchist  journals;  a  revolutionary  organization  has  its 
chemical  department  as  well  as  its  press  department ;  and 
anarchist  tracts  often  end  with  the  standing  exhortation, 
"  Learn  the  use  of  dynamite,"  as  socialist  tracts  end  with 
the  old  admonition  of  1848,  "  Proletarians  of  all  nations, 
unite." 

The  object  of  this  policy  of  violence  is  partly,  as  we  see  from 
the  above  quotations,  to  inflame  the  spirit  of  revolt  and  dis- 
order in  the  working  classes ;  and  it  is  partly  to  terrorize  the 
bourgeoisie,  so   that  they  may  yield  in   pure   panic  all   they 

*  Much  interesting  information  on  this  subject  is  given  from  official 
sources  in  a  recent  anonymous  work,  "  Socialismus  und  Anarchismus  in 
Europa  und  Nordamerika  wahrend  der  Jahre  1883  bis  1886." 

t  Garin,  "  L'Anarchie  et  les  Anarchistes,"  p.  48. 


Anarchism.  257 

possess.  But  for  its  expressly  violent  policy,  anarcliism  would 
be  the  least  formidable  or  offensive  manifestation  of  contem-. 
porary  socialism.  For,  in  the  first  place,  its  specific  doctrine  is 
one  which  it  is  really  difficult  to  get  the  most  ordinary  common 
sense  puzzled  into  accepting.  Men  in  their  better  mind  may 
be  ready  enough  to  listen  to  specious,  or  even  not  very  specious, 
schemes  of  reform  that  hold  out  a  promise  of  extirpating 
misery,  and  in  their  worse  mind  they  may  be  quite  as  prone 
to  think  that  if  everybody  had  his  own,  there  would  be  fewer 
rich  ;  but  they  are  not  likely  to  believe  we  can  get  on  without 
law  or  government  of  any  sort.  Even  the  vainest  will  feel  that 
however  superfluous  these  institutions  may  be  for  themselves, 
they  are  still  unhappily  indispensable  for  some  of  their  neigh- 
bours. Then  in  the  next  place  this  doctrine  of  the  anarchists 
is  as  great  a  stumbling-block  to  themselves  as  it  is  to  other 
people,  for  they  carry  their  objection  to  government  into  their 
own  movement,  and  can  consequently  never  acquire  that 
concentration  and  unity  of  organization  which  is  necessary  for 
any  effectual  conspiracy.  They  are  always  found  constituted 
in  very  small  groups  very  loosely  held  together,  and  small  as 
the  several  groups  may  be,  they  are  always  much  more  likely 
to  subdivide  than  to  consolidate.  Even  the  few  anarchist 
refugees  in  London  who  might  be  expected  to  be  knit  into 
indissoluble  friendship  by  their  common  adversity  have  broken 
into  separate  clubs,  and  the  "  Autonomic  "  and  the  "  Morgen- 
rothe " — though  they  have  hardly  more  than  a  hundred 
members  between  them,  and  all  belong  to  the  same  socialist 
variety  of  anarchist  doctrine — remain  as  the  Jews  and  the 
Samaritans.  It  is  said  to  be  a  subject  of  speculative  discussion 
among  anarchists  whether  two  members  are  sufficient  to  con- 
stitute an  anarchist  club.  This  laxity  of  organization  is  a  natural 
result  of  the  dislike  to  authority  which  the  anarchists  cultivate 
as  a  cardinal  principle.  Subjection  to  an  executive  committee 
is  as  offensive  to  their  feelings  and  as  contrary  to  their  prin- 
ciples as  subjection  to  a  monarch.  The  dread  of  subjection 
keeps  them  disunited  and  weak.  As  Machiavelli  says,  the 
many  ruin  a  revolutionary  society,  and  the  few  are  not  enough. 
A  small  group  may  concoct  an  isolated  crime,  but  it  can  do 
little  towards  the  social  revolution. 


258  Contemporary  Socialism, 

The  anarchist  policy — the  propaganda  of  deed — consists, 
however,  exactly  in  this  concoction  of  isolated  crimes  and  out- 
rages. Some  of  the  continental  powers  are  conferring  at  this 
moment  on  the  propriety  of  taking  international  efforts  against 
the  anarchists,  and  the  question  may  at  least  be  reasonably 
raised  before  our  own  Government,  whether  a  policy  of  pro- 
miscuous outrage  like  this  should  continue  to  be  included 
among  political  offences,  securing  protection  against  extradi- 
tion, and  whether  the  propaganda  of  deed  and  the  use  of 
dynamite  should  not  rather  be  declared  outside  the  limits  of 
fair  and  legitimate  revolution,  as,  by  the  Geneva  Convention, 
explosive  bullets  are  put  outside  the  limits  of  fair  or  legitimate 
war. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

EUSSIAN   NIHILISM. 

Haxthausen  pronounced  a  confident  opinion  in  1847,  when  most 
of  the  continental  nations  were  agitated  with  rumours  of  revo- 
lution, that  Russia  at  any  rate  was  safe  from  the  danger,  in- 
asmuch as  she  enjoyed  an  absolute  protection  against  all  such 
revolutionary  agitation  in  her  communistic  rural  institutions. 
There  was  no  proletariat  in  Russia,  every  man  in  the  country 
being  born  to  a  share  in  the  land  of  the  township  he  belonged 
to ;  and  without  a  proletariat,  concluded  the  learned  professor, 
there  was  neither  motive  nor  material  for  social  revolt.  This 
belief  became  generally  accepted,  and  passed,  indeed,  for  years 
as  a  political  commonplace ;  but  perhaps  never  has  a  political 
prognostication  so  entirely  reasonable  proved  on  experience  so 
utterly  fallacious.  Instead  of  sparing  or  avoiding  Russia,  revo- 
lutionary agitation  has  grown  positively  endemic  in  that 
country ;  it  is  more  virulent  in  its  type,  and  apparently  more 
deepseated  than  elsewhere  ;  and,  stranger  still,  not  the  least  of 
its  exciting  causes  has  been  that  very  communistic  agrarian 
system  which  was  thought  to  be  the  surest  preservation 
against  it. 

In  its  earlier  period,  before  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs, 
the  Russian  revolutionary  movement  was  largely  inspired  by 
an  extravagant  idealization  of  the  perfections  of  the  rural 
commune,  and  now  since  the  emancipation  it  is  fed  far  more 
formidably  by  an  actual  experience  of  the  commune's  defects. 
The  truth  is  that  the  communistic  land  system  of  Russia,  so 
far  from  preventing  the  birth  of  a  proletariat,  is  now  of  itself 
begetting  the  most  numerous  and  the  most  helpless  proleta- 
riat in  the  world.  The  emancipation  dues  would  have  been  a 
serious  burden  under  any  social  arrangements,  but  they  have 
proved   so   much  heavier   under   the  communistic   system  of 

259 


26o  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Russia  than  they  "would  have  been  elsewhere  that  the  system 
itself  is  beginning  to  give  way.  With  an  unlimited  stock  of 
good  land,  all  is  plain  sailing  under  any  social  institutions ;  but 
when  land  is  limited  in  extent  and  every  new-comer  has  the 
right  to  cut  in  and  get  an  equal  share  with  those  already  in 
possession,  excessive  subdivision  is  inevitable,  and  the  point  is 
soon  reached  where  any  fresh  impost  or  outgoing  destroys  the 
profitableness  of  cultivation,  and  converts  the  right  to  the  land 
from  an  asset  into  a  liability.  This  is  what  is  now  happening 
in  Russia.  It  appears  there  are  already  more  paupers  in 
St.  Petersburg  proportionally  to  population  than  in  any  other 
European  capital,  and  as  many  as  a  third  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  provinces  are  either  entirely  landless,  or,  more  unhappy 
still,  find  their  land,  instead  of  a  benefit,  to  be  only  a  grievous 
burden  of  which  they  cannot  shake  themselves  clear.  I  shall 
have  occasion  later  on  to  recur  to  this  new  economic  develop- 
ment in  rural  Russia,  which  is  very  interesting  to  the  student 
of  socialism  on  its  own  account,  but  which  will  concern  us  in 
the  present  chapter  more  particularly  in  its  bearing  on  the 
operations  and  prospects  of  the  revolutionary  party  in  that 
country. 

The  revolutionary  or  nihilist  movement  in  Russia  has 
passed  through  several  successive  phases ;  but  there  is  no  good 
reason  for  denying  its  continuity,  nor  any  impropriety,  as  is 
sometimes  alleged,  in  the  retention  of  the  name  of  Nihilism, 
which  it  bore  when  it  first  engaged  the  attention  of  Western 
Europe,  although  it  may  be  quite  true  that  the  word  is  more 
descriptive  of  the  earlier  developments  of  the  movement  than  of 
the  later.  In  its  first  stage,  before  the  Emancipation  Act,  it  was 
scarce  more  than  an  intellectual  fermentation — an  intellectual 
revolt  all  round,  if  you  will — shaping  more  and  more  in  its 
political  ideas  towards  democratic  socialism,  but  as  yet  entirely 
unorganized,  and  content  to  expend  its  force  in  violent  opinions 
without  recourse  to  action.  Then,  second,  the  Emancipation  Act 
gave  it  organization,  purpose,  malignity,  and  made  it,  in  short, 
the  nihilism  we  know,  converting  it  into  the  engine  of  the 
bitter  discontent  of  the  landed  classes,  who  were  seriously 
straitened  and  many  of  them  ruined  by  the  operation  of  that 
great  reform.     Third,  while  the  impoverishment  of  thousands 


Russian  Nihilism.  261 

of  landed  families  was  the  first  result  of  the  Emancipation  Act, 
its  slower  but  more  serious  result  has  been  the  impoverishment 
of  the  peasantry,  and  nihilism  is  now  assuming  a  more  agrarian 
character,  and  promoting  the  social  revolution  under  the  old 
Russian  cry  for  "  the  black  division," 

For  the  origin  of  nihiHsm  we  must  go  back  half  a  century 
to  a  little  company  of  gifted  young  men,  most  of  whom  rose  to 
great  distinction,  who  used  at  that  time  to  meet  together  at 
the  house  of  a  rich  merchant  in  Moscow,  for  the  discussion  of 
philosophy  and  politics  and  religion.  They  were  of  the  most 
various  views.  Some  of  them  became  Liberal  leaders,  and 
wanted  Russia  to  follow  the  constitutional  development  of  the 
"Western  nations  ;  others  became  founders  of  the  new  Slavo- 
phil party,  contending  that  Russia  should  be  no  imitator,  but 
develop  her  own  native  institutions  in  her  own  way  ;  and  there 
were  at  least  two  among  them  —  Alexander  Herzen  and 
Michael  Bakunin — who  were  to  be  prominent  exponents  of 
revolutionary  socialism.  But  they  all  owned  at  this  period 
one  common  master — Hegel,  Their  host  was  an  ardent  He- 
gelian, and  his  young  friends  threw  themselves  into  the  study 
of  Hegel  with  the  greatest  zeal,  Herzen  himself  tells  us  in  his 
autobiography  how  assiduously  they  read  everything  that  came 
from  his  pen,  how  they  devoted  nights  and  weeks  to  clearing 
up  the  meaning  of  single  passages  in  his  writings,  and  how 
greedily  they  devoured  every  new  pamphlet  that  issued  from 
the  German  press  on  any  part  of  his  system.  From  Hegel, 
Herzen  and  Bakunin  were  led,  exactly  like  Marx  and  the 
German  Young  Hegelians,  to  Feuerbach,  and  from  Feuerbach 
to  socialism.  Bakunin,  when  he  retired  from  the  army,  rather 
than  be  the  instrument  of  oppressing  the  Poles  among  whom 
he  was  stationed,  went  for  some  years  to  Germany,  where  he 
lived  among  the  Young  Hegelians  and  wrote  for  their  organ, 
the  HalVische  JahrhUcTier ;  but  before  either  he  or  Herzen  ever 
had  any  personal  intercommunication  with  the  members  of 
that  school  of  thought,  they  had  passed  through  precisely  the 
same  development.  Herzen  speaks  of  socialism  almost  in  the 
very  phrases  of  the  Young  Hegelians,  as  being  the  new  "  ter- 
restrial religion,"  in  which  there  was  to  be  neither  God  nor 
heaven ;    as  a  new  system  of  society  which  would   dispense 


262  Contemporary  Socialism. 

with  an  authoritative  government,  human  or  Divine,  and 
which  should  be  at  once  the  completion  of  Christianity  and 
the  realization  of  the  Revolution.  "  Christianity,"  he  said, 
"  made  the  slave  a  son  of  man ;  the  Revolution  has  emanci- 
pated him  into  a  citizen.     Socialism  would  make  him  a  manP 

This  tendency  of  thought  was  strongly  supported  in  the 
Russian  mind  by  Haxthausen's  discovery  and  laudation  of  the 
rural  commune  of  Russia.  The  Russian  State  was  the  most 
arbitrary,  oppressive,  and  corrupt  in  Europe,  and  the  Russian 
Church  was  the  most  ignorant  and  superstitious  ;  but  here  at 
last  was  a  Russian  institution  which  was  regarded  with  envy 
even  by  wise  men  of  the  west,  and  was  really  a  practical  anti- 
cipation of  that  very  social  system  which  was  the  last  work  of 
European  philosophy.  It  was  with  no  small  pride,  therefore, 
that  Alexander  Herzen  declared  that  the  Muscovite  peasant  in 
his  dirty  sheepskin  had  solved  the  social  problem  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  that  for  Russia,  with  this  great  problem 
already  solved,  the  Revolution  was  obviously  a  comparatively 
simple  operation.  You  had  but  to  remove  the  Czardom,  the 
services,  and  the  priesthood,  and  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
would  still  remain  organized  in  fifty  thousand  complete 
little  self-governing  communities  living  on  their  common  land 
and  ruling  their  common  affairs  as  they  had  been  doing  long 
before  the  Czardom  came  into  being.  And  what,  after  all,  was 
the  latest  dream  of  philosophical  socialism  but  a  world  of  com- 
munities like  these?  The  new  formula  of  civilization  had 
merely  come  back  to  the  old  Russian  mir. 

All  Russian  writers  draw  a  kindly  and  charming  picture  of 
the  mir^  the  rude  village  council,  in  which  the  heads  of  families 
have  for  ages  managed  their  common  land,  distributed  their 
taxes,  and  settled  all  the  burning  problems  of  the  hamlet  with 
remarkable  freedom,  fairness,  and  mutual  respect.  They  meet 
together  on  some  open  space — perhaps  in  front  of  the  tavern, 
which  is  itself  one  of  their  common  possessions ;  they  beat  out 
their  question  there  till  they  are  unanimous  ;  for  the  mir  will 
know  nothing  of  decision  by  majorities — the  will  of  the  mir  is 
believed  to  be  the  will  of  God  Himself,  and  it  must  be  no 
divided  counsel.  They  argue  sometimes  long  and  keenly,  and, 
as  their  interest  waxes,  they  will  raise  many  voices  at  once,  or 


Russian  Nihilism.  26 


o 


perhaps  break  up  into  separate  groups,  each  discussing  the 
subject  apart ;  but  presently,  out  of  all  the  apparent  disorder, 
the  acceptable  decision  is  somehow  found,  and  peace  reigns 
again  in  the  village  street.  In  these  meetings  they  have  the 
deepest  feeling  and  habit  of  freedom  ;  and  even  when  a  political 
question  arises  affecting  their  interests — a  question  of  taxes 
or  of  administration — they  make  no  scruple  to  speak  in  the 
plainest  terms  of  the  Government  and  the  officials,  and  they 
are  never  interfered  with.  "Nobody  but  God,"  they  say, 
"  dare  judge  the  w/r,"  and  the  Czar,  at  any  rate,  respects  the 
tradition.  That  rude  assembly  is  the  only  free  institution  in 
Russia.  Even  revolutionary  manifestoes  have  been  publicly 
read  at  its  meetings,  and  socialist  addresses  publicly  delivered. 
And  this  instinctive  spirit  of  freedom  is  attended  there  with 
the  instinctive  spirit  of  equality.  A  recent  Russian  writer 
observes  that  a  Russian  peasant  would  be  quite  unable  to 
understand  the  sort  of  respect  the  English  labourer  shows  to 
a  gentleman.  With  its  freedom,  its  equality,  its  strong  family 
sentiment,  its  common  property,  its  self-government,  the  mir  is 
really  the  social  democratic  republic  political  philosophers  have 
projected,  and  a  Russian  who  dislikes  the  State  and  loves  the 
mir  is,  without  more  ado,  a  social  revolutionist  of  the  anarchist 
type.  The  favourite  ideal  among  Russian  revolutionists  for 
the  last  fifty  years  has  accordingly  all  along  been  the  anarchist 
ideal  of  a  free  federation  of  local  industrial  communities  with- 
out any  separate  political  organization  ;  for  the  anarchist  ideal 
is  natural  to  the  Russian  situation. 

Revolutionary  opinions  were  very  rife  in  Russia  during  the 
reign  of  Nicholas ;  but  under  his  iron  rule  they  were  never 
suffered  to  be  spoken  above  the  breath.  His  ascension  to  the 
throne  in  1825  had  been  greeted  by  a  revolution — a  very 
abortive  one,  it  is  true,  but  unfortunately  sufficient  to  set  every 
fibre  of  the  young  Czar's  strong  nature  inflexibly  against  all 
the  liberal  tendencies  encouraged  by  his  father,  and  to  stop  the 
political  development  of  the  country  for  a  generation.  A  hand- 
ful of  constitutional  reformers — united  three  years  before  in 
a  secret  society  to  promote  peasant  emancipation,  the  common 
civil  liberties,  and  stable  instead  of  arbitrary  law — gathered 
a  crowd  to  a  public  pWe  in  the  capital,  and  shouted  for  "  the 


264  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Archduke  Constantine  and  a  Constitution."  Most  part  of  the 
crowd  had  so  little  idea  why  they  had  come  together  that 
they  thought  Constitution  was  the  name  of  the  Archduke 
Constantine's  wife ;  and  the  most  distinguished  man  among 
the  conspirators — Pestel.  the  poet — said,  as  he  was  going  to 
execution,  "I  wished  to  reap  the  harvest  before  sowing  the 
seed."  He  had  done  worse — he  really  kept  the  seed  from  being 
sown  for  thirty  years  to  come.  All  freedom  of  opinion  was 
ruthlessly  suppressed ;  every  means  of  influencing  the  public 
mind  was  stopped ;  there  was  no  liberty  of  printing,  speaking, 
or  meeting ;  there  was  no  saving  grace  but  ignorance,  for 
people  of  reading  and  intelligence  lived  under  perpetual 
liability  to  most  unreasonable  suspicion.  Alexander  Herzen, 
for  example,  was  banished  to  the  Asiatic  frontier  while  still 
a  very  young  man,  merely  because  he  happened  to  make  the 
casual  remark  in  a  private  letter  to  his  father,  which  was 
opened  in  the  post,  that  a  policeman  had  a  few  days  before 
killed  a  man  in  the  streets  of  St,  Petersburg. 

But  this  system  of  lawless  and  unrighteous  repression  nursed 
a  deep  spirit  of  revolt  against  constituted  authority  in  the 
heart  of  the  people,  and  among  the  younger  minds  a  kind  of 
passion  for  the  most  extreme  and  forbidden  doctrines.  All  the 
wildest  phases  of  nihihst  opinion  in  the  sixties  were  already 
raging  in  Russia  in  the  forties.  Haxthausen  says  he  was 
astounded,  when  he  visited  the  Russian  universities  and 
schools,  to  find  the  students  at  every  one  of  them  given  over, 
as  he  says,  to  political  and  religious  notions  of  the  most  all- 
destructive  description.  "It  is  a  miasma,"  he  says.  And 
although  the  only  political  outbreak  of  Nicholas's  reign,  the 
Petracheffsky  conspiracy  of  1849,  was  little  more  than  a  petty 
street  riot,  a  storm  of  serious  revolt  against  the  tyranny  of 
the  Czar  was  long  gathering,  which  would  have  burst  upon 
his  head  after  the  disasters  to  his  army  in  the  Crimea,  had 
he  survived  them.  He  saw  it  thickening,  however,  and  on 
his  death-bed  said  to  his  son,  the  noble  and  unfortunate 
Alexander  H.,  "  I  fear  you  will  find  the  burden  too  heavy." 
The  son  found  it  eventually  heavy  enough,  but  in  the  mean- 
time he  wisely  bent  before  the  storm,  relaxed  the  restraints 
the  father  had  imposed,  and  gave  pledges  of  the  most  liberal 


Russian  Nihilism.  265 

reforms  in  every  department  of  State — judicial  administration, 
local  government,  popular  education,  serf  emancipation.  People 
believed  completely  in  the  young  Czar's  sincerity,  awaited  with, 
great  expectations  the  measures  he  would  propose,  and  mean- 
while indulged  to  the  top  of  their  bent  in  the  practical  liberties 
they  were  already  provisionally  allowed  to  enjoy,  and  gave 
themselves  up  to  a  restless  fervour  for  liberty  and  reform. 

An  independent  press  was  not  among  the  liberties  conceded, 
but  Russian  opinion  at  this  period  found  a  most  effective  voice 
in  a  newspaper  started  in  London  by  Alexander  Herzen,  called 
the  Kolokol  (Bell),  which  for  a  number  of  years  made  a  great 
impression  in  Russia  by  the  accuracy  of  its  information  on 
Russian  affairs,  by  the  boldness  of  its  criticisms  of  the  Govern- 
ment, and  by  the  ease  with  which  it  got  smuggled  into  uni- 
versal circulation.  "When  Herzen  was  sent  to  the  Urals  as  a 
dangerous  person,  he  was  appointed,  very  anomalously — per- 
haps it  was  to  keep  him  there — to  an  administrative  and 
judicial  post,  in  which  he  would  have  apparently  to  sen- 
tence others  while  under  sentence  himself;  but  he  grew 
weary  of  his  banishment,  and  was  permitted  to  exchange  it 
for  the  more  complete,  but  much  more  agreeable,  banishment 
from  Russia  altogether.  After  visiting  Germany  and  France, 
and  after  witnessing,  with  deep  interest  and  deeper  disappoint- 
ment, some  of  the  revolutions  of  1848,  and  writing  that  they 
had  failed  because  their  promoters  were  not  prepared  to  follow 
them  up  witb  a  positive  social  programme,  as  if,  he  says,  the 
mere  destruction  of  a  Bastile  were  a  revolution,  he  settled  in 
England,  and  learnt  there,  as  his  son  assures  us,  that  revolu- 
tion itself  was  but  a  vain  expedient,  and  that  gradual  reform 
was  the  only  effectual  method  of  lasting  social  amelioration. 

It  was  probably  while  he  was  learning  this  lesson — it  was  cer- 
tainly entirely  in  this  spirit — that  he  began  his  political  agitation 
on  the  accession  of  Alexander  II.  The  moment  the  new  Czar 
ascended  the  throne,  Herzen  addressed  to  him  a  famous  letter, 
demanding  amends  for  the  ills  his  father.  Czar  Nicholas,  had 
done  the  people,  a  complete  breach  with  the  old  system,  and 
the  introduction  of  thoroughgoing  Liberal  reforms,  and  more 
especially  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs.  It  was  in  the  same 
spirit  he  conducted  his  agitation  in   the   Kolokol.     Without 


266  Contemporary  Socialism. 

neglecting  to  ventilate  his  socialist  and  philosophical  views, 
he  welcomed  the  contemplated  reforms  as  being  in  themselves 
true  remedies  for  popular  grievances,  and  intended  in  perfect 
good  faith  by  the  Czar  to  be  so ;  and  his  chief  care  in  all  his 
criticisms  always  was  to  secure  that  these  reforms  should  be 
real  and  thorough,  that  the  judicial  body  should  be  inde- 
pendent, the  educational  arrangements  eJSicient ;  above  all, 
that  the  peasants  should  not  be  deprived,  in  the  emancipation 
arrangements,  of  a  foot  of  the  land  they  then  possessed,  or 
made  to  pay  terms  for  their  emancipation  which  would  be  too 
heavy  for  them  to  meet.  And  perhaps  the  most  popular  and 
stirring  part  of  his  paper  was  always  his  exposure  of  existing 
abuses,  and  his  criticism  of  the  conduct  of  officials.  The 
journal  was  written  with  wit,  vigour,  and  accurate  know- 
ledge; and,  as  it  spoke  what  most  men  thought,  but  few 
would  as  yet  venture  to  say,  it  was  greedily  read  and  dis- 
tributed, and  was  for  some  years  a  remarkable  power  in  the 
country.  Herzen  was  the  hero  of  the  young.  Herzenism,  we 
are  told,  became  the  rage,  and  Herzenism  appears  to  have 
meant,  before  all,  a  free  handling  of  everything  in  Church  or 
State  which  was  previously  thought  too  sacred  to  be  touched. 
This  iconoclastic  spirit  grew  more  and  more  characteristic  of 
Russian  society  at  this  period,  and  presently,  under  its  influence, 
Herzenism  fell  into  the  shade,  and  nihilism  occupied  the  scene. 

"We  possess  various  accounts  of  the  meaning  and  nature  of 
nihiUsm,  and  they  all  agree  substantially  in  their  description 
of  it.  The  word  was  first  employed  by  Turgenieff  in  his  novel 
'•'  Fathers  and  Sons,"  where  Arcadi  Petrovitch  surprises  his 
father  and  uncle  by  describing  his  friend  Bazaroff  as  a  nihilist. 

"  A  nihilist,"  said  Nicholas  Petrovitch.  "  This  word  must 
come  from  the  Latin  nihil^  nothing,  as  far  as  I  can  judge,  acd 
consequently  it  signifies  a  man  who  recognises  nothing." 

''  Or  rather  who  respects  nothing,"  said  Paul  Petrovitch. 

"  A  man  who  looks  at  everything  from  a  critical  point  of 
view,"  said  Arcadi. 

"  Does  not  that  come  to  the  same  thing  ?  "  asked  his  uncle. 

"  No,  not  at  all.  A  nihilist  is  a  man  who  bows  before  no 
authority,  who  accepts  no  principle  without  examination,  no 
matter  what  credit  the  principle  has." 


Russian  Nihilism.  267 

"  Yes,  before  we  liad  Hegelians ;  now  we  have  nihilists. 
We  shall  see  what  you  will  do  to  exist  in  nothingness,  in  a 
vacuum,  as  if  under  an  air  pump." 

Koscheleff,  writing  in  1874,  gives  a  similar  explanation  of 
nihilism.  "  Our  disease  is  a  disease  of  character,  and  the  most 
dangerous  possible.  "We  suffer  from  a  fatal  unbelief  in  every- 
thing. We  have  ceased  to  believe  in  this  or  in  that,  not 
because  we  have  studied  the  subject  thoroughly  and  become 
convinced  of  the  untenability  of  our  views,  but  only  because 
some  author  or  another  in  Germany  or  England  holds  this  or 
that  doctrine  to  be  unfounded.  Our  nihilism  is  a  thing  of  a 
quite  peculiar  character.  It  is  not,  as  in  the  West,  the  result 
of  long  falsely  directed  philosophical  studies  and  ways  of  think- 
ing, nor  is  it  the  fruit  of  an  imperfect  social  organization.  It 
is  an  entirely  different  thing  from  that.  The  wind  has  blown 
it  to  us,  and  the  wind  will  blow  it  from  us  again.  Our 
nihilists  are  simply  Badicals.  Their  loud  speeches,  their  fault- 
finding, their  strong  assertions,  are  grounded  on  nothing. 
They  borrow  negative  views  from  foreign  authors,  and  repeat 
them  and  magnify  them  ad  nauseam,  and  treat  persons  of 
another  way  of  thinking  as  absurd  and  antiquated  people  who 
continue  to  cherish  exploded  ideas  aind  customs.  The  chief 
cause  of  the  spread  of  this  (I  will  not  say  doctrine,  for  I  cannot 
honour  it  with  such  a  name,  but)  sect  is  this,  that  it  imparts  its 
communications  in  secret  conversations,  so  that,  for  one  thing, 
it  cannot  be  publicly  criticised  and  refuted,  and,  for  another,  it 
charms  by  the  fascination  of  the  forbidden." 

The  same  view  precisely  is  given  by  Baron  Fircks  ("  Schedo 
Ferroti ")  in  his  very  elaborate  and  thoughtful  account  of 
nihilism  in  his  VAvenir  de  la  Russie.  It  was  merely,  he  said, 
the  critical  spirit — the  spirit  of  intellectual  revolt—  carried  to 
an  extreme  and  running  amuck  against  all  accepted  principles 
in  religion,  in  politics,  in  domestic  and  social  life.  It  was 
a  common  infirmity  of  contemporary  society,  and  was  in 
no  way  peculiar  to  Russia ;  but  while  that  may  be  true,  it 
has  undoubtedly — as  perhaps  the  Baron  would  admit — been 
carried  into  more  extravagant  manifestations  in  Russia  than 
elsewhere. 

Nor  are  the  reasons  of  this  extravagance  far  to  seek.     First, 


268  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  Russians  are,  in  national  character,  singularly  impress ion- 
alole,  volatile,  and  predisposed  to  run  to  extremes.  Diderot  says 
they  were  rotten  before  they  were  ripe.  Second,  they  are  mere 
children  in  political  experience,  and  even  in  intellectual  training. 
Their  education  is  in  general  shallow,  and  they  are  liable  to  the 
vagaries  of  the  half  educated.  Third,  both  Baron  Fircks  and 
KoschelefF  think  nihilism  was  largely  due  to  the  arbitrary 
government  of  the  country.  The  Czar  and  the  bureaucracy 
have  themselves  had  much  to  do  with  destroying  respect  for 
law  and  authority  by  their  capricious  habits  of  administration. 
Laws  were  proclaimed  to-day  and  repealed  to-morrow,  or 
even  broken  by  the  very  officials  engaged  in  administering 
them.  Even  in  the  days  of  Nicholas,  Herzen  complained 
bitterly  of  this  constant  inconstancy  of  the  law ;  he  said  the 
Russian  Government  was  "  infatuated  with  innovation,"  that 
"  nothing  was  allowed  to  remain  as  it  was,"  that  "  everything 
was  always  being  changed,"  that  "  a  new  ministry  invariably 
began  its  work  by  upsetting  that  of  its  predecessors."  Russia 
being  a  Functionary  State,  not  a  Law  State,  to  employ  a  useful 
German  distinction,  the  decrees  of  officials  take  the  place 
elsewhere  filled  by  fixed  laws  established  by  legislative 
authority ;  and  where  these  decrees  are  continually  changing, 
reverence  for  the  law  is  impossible. 

But  in  all  this  there  was  no  practical  political  disaffection 
before  the  Emancipation  Act.  The  nihilists  had  as  yet  a 
vague  belief  in  the  Czar  and  the  coming  reforms ;  they  felt 
that  the  Russian  people  were  at  last  to  have  a  chance  of 
showing  the  rich  genius  that  lay  in  them,  and  their  whole 
anxiety  was  to  have  the  people  adequately  trained  for  this 
great  destiny.  It  was  the  common  talk  that  the  future  be- 
longed to  Russia ;  and  that  she  was  already  beginning  to  out- 
shine all  other  nations  in  literature,  in  art,  in  science,  in  music. 
"  Some  young  people  among  us,"  says  Turgenieff,  "  have  dis- 
covered even  a  Russian  arithmetic.  Two  and  two  do  make 
four  with  us  as  well  as  elsewhere,  but  more  pompously,  it 
would  seem.  All  this  is  nothing  but  the  stammering  of  men 
who  are  just  awaking." 

J  Under  these  influences  the  energies  of  the  nihilists  took  a 
different   outlet   than   plotting.      Instead   of   founding   secret 


Russian  Nihilisin.  269 

societies,  they  founded  Sunday  schools.  For  to  their  mind 
the  first  need  of  the  time,  above  even  political  liberty,  was 
popular  education.  As  to  liberty,  the  measure  they  practically 
enjoyed  at  the  gracious  pleasure  of  the  Czar  for  the  present 
contented  them,  inasmuch  as  it  seemed  an  earnest  of  the  better 
securities  that  were  expected  to  follow  ;  but  they  could  not  with 
any  satisfaction  look  round  them  and  see  the  Russian  people, 
for  whom  they  were  prophesying  such  a  great  career,  still 
lying  in  almost  aboriginal  ignorance.  The  stuff  was  indeed 
there  which  should  yet  astonish  the  world,  but  it  must  first  be 
made.  To  "  make  the  people,"  as  they  phrased  it,  was  the 
task  the  nihilists  now  undertook,  and  they  threw  themselves 
into  it  with  the  zeal  of  apostles.  They  put  on  shabby  clothes 
to  avoid  any  offensive  superiority  to  their  poorer  neighbours, 
and  they  wore  green  spectacles  to  correct  the  even  more 
intolerable  inequality  of  personal  beauty,  for,  as  they  were  fond 
of  saying,  they  had  put  off  the  old  man  and  were  now  new 
men  created  again  by  Buchner  and  Feuerbach  in  the  gospel  of 
humanity ;  but  with  all  their  extravagances  they  carried  on 
for  some  years  a  most  active  and  no  doubt  useful  work  in 
the  Sunday  schools  and  reading  circles  which  they  rapidly 
established  everywhere. 

Although  this  movement  fell  eventually  under  the  suspicion 
of  the  Government,  as  in  despotic  countries  any  movement  will, 
it  seems  to  have  had  no  political,  or  what  the  authorities  call 
"  ill-intentioned  "  purpose.  It  was  pervaded  with  patriotic  and 
humanitarian  feeling,  and  though  no  doubt  many  of  the  nihilists 
who  took  part  in  it  held  as  extreme  opinions  in  politics  as  they 
did  in  everything  else,  yet  these  opinions  were  mere  matters 
of  speculation.  It  is  certain  that  democratic  and  revolutionary 
socialism  was  a  very  popular  doctrine  among  the  nihilists,  even 
at  that  earliest  period  of  their  history,  for  their  most  represen- 
tative man  during  that  period  was  Tchemycheffsky,  the  editor 
of  the  Contemporary  magazine,  and  a  political  economist  of  some 
note  in  his  day ;  and  Tchemycheffsky  was  undoubtedly  a  demo- 
cratic and  revolutionary  socialist.  He  belonged  to  a  younger 
generation  than  Herzen  and  Bakunin,  but,  like  them,  he  had 
been  led  to  socialism  through  Hegel  and  Feuerbach,  and  he 
expounded  his  ideas  in  a  famous  romance  entitled,  "What  is  to 


270  Contemporary  Socialism. 

be  done  ? "  which  the  Government  allowed  him  to  write,  and 
even  to  publish,  while  in  prison  for  sedition  in  1862,  though  they 
suppressed  the  book  sternly  when  they  saw  it  beginning  to 
make  a  sensation. 

But  although  revolutionary  and  socialistic  principles  may 
have  been  very  considerably  entertained  by  the  nihilists  from 
the  first,  there  was  no  practical  revolutionary  or  socialistic 
organization  before  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs.  Up  till  then 
nihilism  may  be  said  to  have  been  a  benignant  growth,  if  I  may 
use  a  medical  expression,  and  it  was  that  great  historical 
measure  that  converted  it  into  the  malignant  and  deadly 
trouble  which  we  best  know.  The  Russian  Radicals,  including 
the  socialists,  were  strongly  disappointed  with  that  measure 
from  the  outset,  because  they  thought  it  inflicted  serious  in- 
justice on  the  peasantry.  It  deprived  them,  they  said,  of  much 
of  the  land  they  had  hitherto  enjoyed  as  of  right,  and  which 
was  necessary  for  their  comfortable  subsistence,  while  it  im- 
posed on  them  for  what  they  got  excessive  dues  which  their 
holdings  would  never  be  able  to  bear;  and  so  the  first  Land  and 
Liberty  League  was  founded  in  1863.  But  it  was  not  the 
■peasants,  or  the  peasants'  friends — it  was  the  small  landed 
gentry  who  were  the  first  to  feel  the  effects  of  the  Emancipa- 
tion Act,  and  to  raise  the  standard  of  revolt.  The  Act  made  a 
serious  change  in  their  fortunes.  Although  the  landlords  were 
allowed  most  liberal  terms  of  compensation  for  the  enforced 
emancipation  of  their  serfs,  few  of  them  actually  received  a 
kopeck,  because  they  were  almost  all  of  them  already  deeply 
indebted  to  Government,  and  Government  applied  the  compen- 
sation money  to  cancel  their  old  debts,  and  gave  up  the  policy 
of  granting  any  more  mortgages  in  the  future.  Then  a  great 
part  of  the  land  which  was  formerly  cultivated  by  means  of 
the  serfs  was  now  found  to  be  too  poor  to  afford  the  expense  of 
paid  labour ;  the  landlords  had  neither  stock  nor  implements  to 
work  it,  if  it  were  more  fertile,  the  peasantry  having  in  the  old 
days  tilled  tne  field  for  them  with  their  own  horses  and  ploughs; 
nor  had  they  any  means  of  raising  the  stock  on  credit,  and, 
besides,  most  of  them  were  complete  absentees,  engaged  as 
Government  or  railway  officials,  or  in  other  professional 
work,   and    knew   nothing   whatever   about   the   business   of 


Russian  Nihilism.  271 

agriculture.  The  smaller  landlords  have  therefore  been  com- 
pelled to  sell  their  estates  to  the  larger,  or  to  leave  much  of 
their  ground  entirely  uncultivated.  In  Moscow  there  were  633 
separate  estates  in  1861,  before  the  emancipation,  but  only  422 
in  1877,  and  not  more  than  one-fifth  of  the  land  that  was  culti- 
vated in  that  province  in  1861  continued  in  cultivation  in  1877. 
Many  of  the  sons  of  the  smaller  proprietors  were  at  the  univer- 
sities studying  for  one  of  the  professions,  and  had  either  to  give 
up  their  studies  altogether  for  want  of  means,  or  were  put  on 
shorter  allowances,  which  was  scarcely  less  annoying,  and  was 
indeed  a  great  cause  of  revolutionary  opinions  at  the  universi- 
ties. Many  more  of  the  sons  of  the  gentry  were  in  the  army, 
and  the  pay  of  a  Russian  oflScer  being  extremely  small,  they 
had  been  accustomed  to  receive  allowances  from  home,  without 
which,  indeed,  they  could  hardly  live  ;  and  now  in  the  altered 
circumstances  of  the  family  these  allowances  were  perforce 
suddenly  stopped.  Much  of  the  revolutionary  discontent  that 
exists  in  the  Russian  army  to  such  a  serious  extent  that  200 
arrests  were  made  in  March,  1885,  and  Government  appointed 
a  special  commission  of  inquiry  into  the  subject,  has  come  from 
this  source,  and  is  practically  a  revolt  against  insufficient  pay. 
But  what  happened  at  the  universities  and  in  the  army  hap- 
pened in  other  departments  of  Russian  life ;  the  Emancipation 
Act  had  left  on  every  shore  some  wreckage  of  the  gentry,  an 
upper-class  and  educated  proletariat,  whose  distress  might  be 
due  originally  to  their  own  improvidence  or  ignorance,  but 
was  undoubtedly  firet  driven  into  an  acute  state  by  an  act 
of  Government,  and  therefore  clamoured  for  vengeance  on  the 
Government  that  produced  it. 

The  clamour  of  the  victims  of  the  Emancipation  Act  naturally 
woke  up  all  the  earlier  discontents  of  the  country.  The  Poles 
and  the  dissenting  sects,  with  all  their  ancient  wrongs,  seem  to 
have  contributed  but  a  small  contingent  to  the  nihilist  ranks ; 
but  the  Jews,  subject  to  a  barbarous  and  often  very  acute  per- 
secution, have  filled  the  secret  societies  from  the  beginning  with 
many  of  their  most  determined  members,  and  have  supplied  a 
great  part  of  the  "  Nihilistesses  "  ;  and  even  though  the  Revo- 
lutionary Executive  Committes  has  latterly  issued  a  proclama- 
tion against  the  Jews,  mainly  on  the  ground  of  the  extortion 


272  Contemporary  Socialism. 

practised  by  Jewisli  money-'' «nders  on  the  peasantry,  there  are 
still,  as  appears  very  abundantly  from  the  nihilist  trials  of  1890, 
many  Jews  among  the  revolutionists. 

Then  there  are  thirteen  millions  of  native  heretics  in  Russia, 
sects  of  various  sorts  springing  up  like  the  early  Quakers  from 
the  bosom  of  the  people,  and  filled  with  a  rude  spirit  of  freedom 
and  a  tendency  towards  socialistic  ideas  in  their  condemnation 
of  luxury  and  accumulation,  their  hatred  of  war  and  military 
government,  and  their  belief  in  fraternity  and  mutual  assist- 
ance. Some  writers  allege  that  these  sects  are  an  important 
factor  in  the  revolutionary  movement ;  but  though  they  cer- 
tainly have  suffered  many  wrongs  from  Government,  they  do 
not  seem  to  have  furnished  any  great  quota  to  the  revolution- 
ary ranks.  They  are  the  freethinkers  of  the  unlettered  classes, 
however,  and  their  ideas  no  doubt  have  some  influence  in 
preparing  these  classes  for  socialist  principles.  But  there  is 
another  class  very  numerous  in  Russia,  who  are  the  natural 
allies  of  revolution — the  "  illegal  men  "  who,  for  various  reasons, 
go  about  on  false  passports,  and  are  thus  living  in  revolt 
already.  And  to  all  these  diverse  sources  of  disaffection  must 
be  added  the  aggravation  arising  at  the  moment  from  the 
tyrannical  and  arbitrary  measures  to  which  the  Government 
resorted  on  the  first  outburst  of  complaints. 

In  1862,  perceiving  the  discontent  raised  by  the  Emancipa- 
tion Act,  Government  took  alarm,  and  withdrew  or  curtailed 
the  liberties  it  had  for  a  few  years  allowed  the  people  to  enjoy. 
It  stopped  some  newspapers  and  warned  a  number  more ;  it 
prohibited  the  Sunday  schools  and  reading  clubs  altogether ; 
it  banished  many  persons  on  mere  suspicion  to  remote 
provinces ;  and  for  a  greater  example  it  cast  the  eminent 
writer  Tchernycheffsky  into  prison  on  a  charge  of  exciting  the 
peasantry  to  revolt,  and  after  leaving  him  there  without  trial 
for  nearly  two  years,  brought  him  out  at  length  to  a  public 
square  in  St.  Petersburg,  read  out  to  him  a  sentence  of  trans- 
portation, broke  a  sword  over  his  head,  and  sent  him  to  the 
Siberian  mines  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  There  he  still  remains, 
broken  now  both  in  mind  and  body,  but  probably  doing  more 
harm  to  the  Government  by  his  wrongs  than  he  could  ever 
have  done  by  his  pen,  for  nihihsts  have  for  twenty-seven  years 


Russian  Nihilism.  273 

been  constantly  exciting  popular  sympathy  by  descriptions 
of  his  martyrdom  and  demands  for  his  release. 

It  was  while  this  alienation  against  the  Government  was 
thickening  that  Michael  Bakunin  escaped  from  Siberia,  and 
it  was  by  emissaries  sent  by  Bakunin  to  Russia  that  the 
first  successful  attempt  was  made  to  incite  and  organize  all 
these  revolutionary  materials  into  a  revolutionary  movement. 
When  Bakunin  came  back  in  1862  and  joined  Herzen  in 
London,  the  two  old  friends  found  their  ideas  had  parted  far 
asunder  during  their  long  separation.  Herzen  had,  from  his 
twelve  years'  observation  of  affairs,  broadened  from  revolutionist 
to  statesman,  and  had  no  patience  now  for  the  extravagance 
of  the  young  Russian  patriots  who  visited  him  in  London. 
"  Our  black  earth,"  he  would  say,  "  needs  a  deal  of  draining." 
And  there  is  a  remarkable  letter  which  he  wrote  shortly  before 
his  death,  and  apparently  to  Bakunin  himself,  in  which  he 
says : — 

"  I  will  own  that  one  day,  surrounded  by  dead  bodies, 
by  houses  destroyed  with  balls  and  bullets,  and  listening 
feverishly  as  prisoners  were  being  shot  down,  I  called  with 
my  whole  heart  and  intelligence  upon  the  savage  force  of 
vengeance  to  destroy  the  old  criminal  world,  without  thinking 
much  of  what  was  to  come  in  its  place.  Since  that  time 
twenty  years  have  gone  by ;  the  vengeance  has  come,  but  it 
has  come  from  the  other  side,  and  it  is  the  people  who  have 
borne  it,  because  they  comprehended  nothing  either  then  or 
since.  A  long  and  painful  interval  has  given  time  for  passions 
to  calm,  for  thoughts  to  deepen ;  it  has  given  the  necessary 
time  for  reflection  and  observation.  Neither  you  nor  I  have 
betrayed  our  convictions ;  but  we  see  the  question  now  from  a 
different  point  of  view.  You  rush  ahead,  as  you  did  before, 
with  a  passion  of  destruction,  which  you  take  for  a  creative 
passion ;  you  crush  every  obstacle  ;  you  respect  history  only  in 
the  future.  As  for  me,  on  the  contrary,  I  have  no  faith  in  the 
old  revolutionary  methods,  and  I  try  to  comprehend  the  march 
of  men  in  the  past  and  in  the  present,  to  know  how  to 
advance  with  them  without  falling  behind,  but  without  going 
on  so  far  before  as  you,  for  they  would  not  follow  me — they 
could  not  follow  me !  " 

T 


2  74  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Herzen  gradually  lost  hold  over  tlie  wilder  forces  in  Russia, 
he  was  even  openly  denounced  as  a  reactionary  by  the  revolu- 
tionist Dolgourouki ;  and  when  he  alienat3d  the  more  moderate 
parties  likewise  by  his  support  of  the  Polish  insurrection  of 
1863,  his  spell  vanished,  and  during  the  remaining  seven 
years  of  his  life  his  influence  was  of  little  account. 

Bakunin  was  more  in  unison  with  the  troubled  spirit  of  the 
times.  While  Herzen  had  been  ripening  in  political  wisdom 
under  the  ampler  intellectual  life  to  which  his  exile  intro- 
duced him,  Bakunin's  twelve  years'  confinement  had  maddened 
him  into  a  fanatic,  and  instead  of  curing  him  of  revolutionary 
propensities,  only  fixed  the  idea  of  revolution  in  his  mind  like 
a  mania.  When  he  came  to  London  a  huge,  haggard  man, 
always  excited,  always  talking,  he  used  to  speak  of  himself  as 
a  Prometheus  unbound,  and  he  was  to  live  henceforth  for  the 
undoing  of  the  powers  and  sj^stems  that  were.  He  was  never 
found  without  a  group  of  conspirators  and  refugees  of  all 
shades  and  nationalities  about  him.  With  some  reminiscences 
of  socialistic  philosophy  remaining  in  the  background  of  his 
mind,  his  only  real  interest  now  was  revolution,  and  he  seemed 
always  thenceforth  to  look  on  his  sociaUsm  as  a  means  of  revo- 
lution rather  than  on  revolution  as  a  means  to  socialism.  His 
socialism  itself  had  grown  less  sane — it  was  no  longer  the 
anarchism  of  the  old  days :  it  was  what  he  called  "  amorphism  " 
— society  not  merely  without  governmental  institutions,  but 
without  institutions  of  any  kind ;  and  he  was  domineered  by 
the  thought  of  a  universal  revolution,  in  which  all  States 
and  Churches  and  all  institutions  religious,  political,  judicial, 
financial,  academical,  and  social  should  perish  in  a  common 
destruction.  "  Amorphism  "  and  •'  Pan-destruction  "  are  not 
articles  of  a  rational  creed,  but  they  were  propagated  with 
almost  preternatural  energy  by  Bakunin.  The  AAork  of  exciting 
revolution  and  disorder  of  any  kind  was  the  main  business  of 
his  life  till  he  died  in  1876.  Others  might  play  a  waiting  game, 
but  for  him  the  work  of  the  revolutionist  was  revolution  ;  and 
he  ought  to  be  incessantly  promoting  it,  not  by  word  only, 
but  by  deed,  by  an  unremitting  terrorism,  by  shooting  a 
policeman  when  you  can't  reach  a  king,  and  destroying  a 
Bastile  if  you  cannot  overturn  an  empire.     In  his  "  Revolu- 


Russian  Nihilism.  275 

tionary  Catecliism,"  written  in  cipher,  but  read  by  the  public 
prosecutor  at  a  Russian  nihilist  trial  in  1871,  he  says  (I  quote 
the  passage  from  M.  de  Laveleye) : — 

"  The  revolutionist  is  a  man  under  a  vow.  He  ought  to 
have  no  personal  interests,  no  business,  no  sentiments,  no 
property.  He  ought  to  occupy  himself  entirely  with  one 
exclusive  interest,  with  one  thought  and  one  passion :  the 
Rsvol  ution.  ...  He  has  only  one  aim,  one  science : 
destruction.  For  that  and  nothing  but  that  he  studied 
mechanics,  physics,  chemistry,  and  medicine.  He  observes 
with  the  same  object,  the  men,  the  characters,  the  positions 
and  all  the  conditions  of  the  social  order.  He  despises  and 
hates  existing  morality.  For  him  everything  is  moral  that 
favours  the  triumph  of  the  Revolution.  Everything  is  im- 
moral and  criminal  that  hinders  it.  .  .  .  Between  him 
and  society  there  is  war  to  the  death,  incessant,  irreconcilable, 
He  ought  to  be  prepared  to  die,  to  bear  torture,  and  to  kill 
with  his  own  hands  all  who  obstruct  the  revolution.  So  much 
the  worse  for  him  if  he  has  in  this  world  any  ties  of  parentage, 
friendship,  or  love !  He  is  not  a  true  revolutionist  if  these 
attachments  stay  his  arm.  In  the  meantime  he  ought  to  live 
in  the  middle  of  society,  feigning  to  be  what  he  is  not.  He 
ought  to  penetrate  everywhere,  among  high  and  low  alike ; 
into  the  merchant's  office,  into  »the  church,  into  the  Govern- 
ment bureaux,  into  the  army,  into  the  literary  world,  into  the 
secret  police,  and  even  into  the  Imperial  Palace.  .  .  .  He 
must  make  a  list  of  those  who  are  condemned  to  death,  and 
expedite  their  sentence  according  to  the  order  of  their  relative 
iniquities.  ...  A  new  member  can  only  be  received  into 
the  association  by  a  unanimous  vote,  and  after  giving  proofs 
of  his  merit  not  in  word  but  in  action.  Every  '  companion ' 
ought  to  have  under  his  hand  several  revolutionists  of  the  second 
or  third  degree,  not  entirely  initiated.  He  ought  to  consider 
them  part  of  the  revolutionary  capital  placed  at  his  disposal, 
and  he  ought  to  use  them  economically,  and  so  as  to  extract 
the  greatest  possible  profit  out  of  them,  .  .  .  The  most 
precious  element  of  all  are  women,  completely  initiated,  and 
accepting  our  entire  programme.  Without  their  help  we  can 
do  nothing." 


276  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Bakunin  naturally  turned  his  first  attention  to  his  own 
countr}',  and  the  subsequent  development  of  Russian  affairs 
show  sufTiciently  distinct  signs  of  his  ideas  and  influence. 

In  1865  he  sent  a  young  medical  student  named  Netchaieff 
to  Moscow,  to  work  among  the  students  there,  and  Netchaieff 
had,  by  1869,  established  a  number  of  secret  societies,  which  he 
linked  together  under  the  name  of  the  Russian  Branch  of  the 
International  Working  Men's  Association.  This  organization 
was  not  very  numerous — no  Russian  secret  society  is — but  in 
1873  as  many  as  eighty-seven  persons  were  brought  to  trial  for 
connection  with  it,  and  in  1866  one  of  its  members,  a  working 
man  called  Karakasoff,  who  was  suffering  from  an  incurable 
disease,  made  the  first  attempt  on  the  life  of  the  Czar — an 
event  which  had  most  important  effects  on  the  course  of 
Russian  politics.  It  rang  out  the  era  of  reform,  and  rang  in 
the  era  of  reaction.  The  popular  concessions  which  the  Czar 
had  already  given  he  now  began  to  withdraw.  The  people 
had  never  got,  as  they  expected,  an  independent  judiciary — 
perhaps  in  an  autocratic  country  a  judiciary  independent  of 
the  executive  is  hardly  possible — but  they  had  enjoyed  some 
pretence  of  public  trial,  and  now  that  pretence  was  done  away, 
and  Karakasoff  and  his  companions  were  not  brought  before 
the  court  at  all,  but  tried  and  condemned  by  an  extraordinary 
commission,  with  a  militaryj  officer  of  approved  ferocity  at 
its  head.  Administrative  trial  and  administrative  condem- 
nation became  again  the  regular  rule  in  Russia ;  and  though 
these  things  were  borne  in  the  days  of  Nicholas  as  almost 
matters  of  course,  they  were  now  deeply  relented  as  fresh 
invasions  of  right  and  direct  breaches  of  imperial  promises. 
Then  the  bodies  to  which  a  certain  amount  of  the  local  govern- 
ment of  the  country,  the  management  of  roads,  schools,  poor, 
health,  etc.,  had  been  entrusted,  were  obstructed  in  the  exercise 
of  their  powers,  or  gradually  deprived  of  their  powers  altogether, 
and  forced  into  complete  dependence  on  the  imperial  executive. 
The  students  at  the  universities  began  to  be  interfered  with  in 
their  sick  and  benefit  societies  and  their  reading  circles ;  their 
studies  in  the  class-rooms  were  restricted  to  what  was  thought 
a  safe  routine ;  and  even  their  private  lives  and  motions  were 
watched  with  an  exasperating  espionage.     People  felt  the  hand 


Russian  Nihilism.  277 

of  the  despot  pressing  back  upon  them  everywhere,  and  they 
felt  it  with  a  most  natural  and  righteous  recoil.  This  reac- 
tionary policy,  which  has  continued  ever  since — this  return  to 
the  hated  old  methods  of  arbitrary  and  repressive  rule — 
produced,  as  was  inevitable,  deep  and  general  discontent  at 
the  very  moment  when  the  great  historical  measure  of  serf 
emancipation  was  desolating  the  families  of  the  landed  gentry, 
province  after  province ;  and  when  the  execution  of  the  Emanci- 
pation Act  was  completed  in  1870,  Russian  society  was  already 
quivering  with  dangerous  elements  of  revolt. 

From  that  time  evidences  of  an  active  revolutionary  propa- 
ganda multiplied  rapidly  every  year.  In  1871  and  1872  the 
writings  of  the  German  socialists  were  translated  and  ran 
into  great  favour.  Even  of  Marx's  far  from  popular  work, 
"  Capital,"  a  large  edition  was  eagerly  bought  up,  and  ladies 
of  position  baptized  their  children  in  the  name  of  Lassalle. 
Secret  societies  were  discovered  both  north  and  south.  From 
1873  to  1877  nihilist  arrests,  nihilist  prosecutions,  nihilist  con- 
flicts with  the  police,  were  the  order  of  the  day,  till  at  length, 
in  1878,  the  young  girl.  Vera  Sassulitch,  fired  the  shot  at  the 
head  of  the  Russian  police  which  began  that  long  vendetta 
between  the  revolutionists  and  the  executive,  in  which  so  many 
officials  perished,  and  eventually,  in  1881,  after  many  un- 
successful attempts,  the  Czar  himself  was  so  cruelly  assassinated. 

The  ardent  youth  of  Russia,  who,  in  1861,  were  still  giving 
themselves  to  the  work  of  Sunday  schools  and  reading  circles, 
were,  in  1871,  throwing  their  careers  away  to  go  out,  like  the 
first  apostles,  without  scrip  or  two  coats,  and  propagate  among 
the  rude  people  of  the  provinces  the  doctrines  of  modem  revolu- 
tionary socialism,  and  by  1881  had  become  absorbed  in  sheer 
terrorism,  in  avenging  the  ofiicial  murder  of  comrades  without 
trial  by  the  revolutionary  murder  of  officials,  in  contriving 
infernal  plots  and  explosions,  and  trying  vainly  to  cast  out 
devils  by  the  prince  of  devils. 

Stepniak  attributes  the  impetus  which  the  socialist  agita- 
tion received  in  1871  to  the  impression  produced  in  Russia  by 
the  Paris  Commune ;  but  it  would  perhaps  be  more  correct 
simply  to  ascribe  it  to  the  exertions  of  two  active  Russian 
revolutionists,  who  were  themselves  associated  with  the  Com- 


278  Conte?nporary  Socialism. 

munard  movement,  and  who  happened  to  enjoy  at  this  period 
unusual  facilities  of  communication  with  the  younger  mind  of 
Russia.  One  was  Bakunin,  who  had  himself  organized  an 
insurrection  at  Lyons  on  the  principles  of  the  Commune  six 
months  before  the  outbreak  at  Paris  in  March,  1871  ;  and  the 
other  was  Peter  Lavroff,  the  present  Nestor  of  Russian  nihilism, 
who  actually  took  part  in  the  Paris  Commune  itself.  Lavroff, 
who  had  been  a  colonel  in  the  Russian  army,  and  professor  in 
the  military  college  of  St.  Petersburg,  was  compromised  in  the 
attempt  of  KarakasofF  in  1866  and  administratively  banished 
to  Archangel ;  but,  as  happens  so  singularly  often  in  Russia,  he 
escaped  in  1869,  and  lived  to  edit  a  revolutionary  journal  in 
Zurich,  and  play  for  a  time  no  inconsiderable  part  in  making 
trouble  in  Russia.  At  present,  communications  between  the 
active  revolutionists  who  are  at  work  in  Russia  and  their 
predecessors  who  have  withdrawn  to  Western  Europe  are 
entirely  interrupted;  but  they  were  still  abundant  twenty 
years  ago.  Partly  in  consequence  of  the  reactionary  educa- 
tional policy  of  the  Government,  young  Russians  flocked  at  that 
time  to  Switzerland  for  their  education,  and  were  there  con- 
veniently indoctrinated  into  the  new  gospel  of  the  Inter- 
national. Bakunin  and  Lavroff  were  both  in  Zurich,  and  in 
the  year  1872  there  were  239  Russian  students,  male  and 
female,  in  Zurich  alone.  These  young  people  were,  of  course, 
in  continual  intercourse  with  the  older  refugees.  Bakunin  and 
Lavroff  both  held  stated  and  formal  lectures  on  socialism  and 
revolution,  which  were  always  succeeded  by  open  and  animated 
discussions  of  the  subject  treated  in  them.  A  little  later  there 
were,  according  to  Professor  Thun,  four  distinct  groups  among 
the  Russian  revolutionists  in  Zurich,  some  of  them  caused  by 
personal  quarrels.  But  from  the  first  there  were  always  two, 
one  of  whom  swore  by  Bakunin,  and  the  other  by  Lavroff. 

Bakunin  was  an  anarchist — an  "amorphist"  even,  as  we 
have  seen — and  he  believed  in  the  propaganda  of  deeds. 
Every  little  village,  he  thought,  should  make  its  own  revolu- 
tion ;  and  if  it  could  not  make  a  revolution,  it  might  always  be 
making  a  riot,  or  an  explosion,  or  a  fire,  or  an  assassination  of 
some  official,  or  something  else  to  raise  panic  or  confusion. 
All  this  seemed  to  Lavroff  and  his  friends  to  be  unmitigated 


Russian  Nihilism.  279 

folly.  They  too  believed  in  revolution  ;  but  in  tbeir  view  re- 
volution, to  be  successful,  must  be  organized  and  simultaneous ; 
it  must,  above  all,  first  have  the  peasantry  on  its  side ;  and 
therefore,  instead  of  the  mad  and  premature  propaganda  of 
deed,  the  true  policy  for  the  present  was  manifestly  "  going  into 
the  people,"  as  they  termed  it — that  is,  an  itinerant  mission 
to  indoctrinate  the  people  into  the  faith  of  the  coming  revo- 
lution. Then,  again,  Lavrofif,  though,  like  almost  all  Russian 
revolutionists,  an  anarchist,  was  not,  like  most  of  them,  pre- 
pared to  dispense  all  at  once  with  the  State.  He  thought  the 
new  society  would  eventually  be  able  to  do  without  any  central 
authority,  but  not  at  first,  nor  for  a  considerable  time,  the 
length  of  which  could  not  now  be  more  precisely  determined. 
In  this  Lavroff  and  his  party  stood  much  nearer  the  Social 
Democrats  of  Germany  than  other  Russian  nihilists,  and  they 
hav3  come  nearer  still  since  then,  They  have  cast  off  the 
Russian  commune,  of  which  the  early  nihilists  made  so  great 
an  idol.  They  see  that  it  is  an  old-world  institution  doomed 
to  dissolution,  and  rapidly  undergoing  the  process. 

The  two  tendencies — diverging  both  in  principle  and  in  tac-i 
tics — appeared  in  Russia  as  well  as  Zurich.  At  first  the  more 
peaceful  method  prevailed.  Lavroff's  idea  of  ''  going  into  the 
people"  was  the  enthusiasm  of  the  hour,  and  brought  upon  the 
scene  the  typical  nihilist  missionary — the  young  man  of  good 
birth  who  laid  down  station  and  prospects,  learnt  a  manual 
trade,  browned  his  hands  with  tar  and  his  face  by  smearing  it 
with  butter  and  lying  in  the  sun,  put  on  the  peasant's  sheep- 
skin, and  then,  with  a  forged  pass,  procured  at  the  secret  nihilist 
pass  factory,  and  a  few  forbidden  books  in  his  wallet,  set  off 
"  without  road "  to  be  a  peasant  with  peasants,  if  by  any 
means  he  could  win  them  over  to  the  cause  ;  and  the  still  more 
remarkable  young  woman  who  went  through  a  marriage  cere- 
mony to  obtain  the  right  of  independent  action,  and  the  moment 
the  ceremony  was  over,  left  father  and  mother  and  husband 
and  all  in  order  to  work  among  the  peasants  of  the  Volga  as  a 
teacher  or  nurse,  and  live  on  milk  and  groats  according  to 
Tchernycheffsky's  prescription  in  "  What  is  to  be  Done  ?  " 
Stepniak  justly  remarks  that  "  the  type  of  propagandist  of  the 
first  lustre  of  1870-80  was  religious  rather  than  revolutionary. 


28o  Contemporary  Socialism. 

His  hope  was  socialism,  his  God  the  people.  Notwithstanding 
all  the  evidence  to  the  contrary,  he  firmly  believed  that  from 
one  day  to  the  other  the  revolution  was  about  to  break  out,  as 
in  the  middle  ages  people  believed  at  certain  periods  in  the 
approach  of  the  day  of  judgment."  ("  Underground  Russia," 
p.  30.) 

For  some  years  these  ascetic  devotees  might  be  found  in 
every  corner  of  Irjad  Russia,  working  as  shoemakers  or 
joiners  most  of  them  (why  these  were  the  favourite  trades  does 
not  appear),  or  as  hawkers  of  images  or  tea,  or,  perhaps,  like 
Prince  Krapotkin,  as  painters.  Some  of  them  went  as  horse- 
dealers,  from  a  dreamy  idea  that  the  horses  might  prove  use- 
ful in  the  day  of  revolution.  They  all  belonged  to  one  or 
other  of  the  secret  societies  which,  as  we  have  seen,  began 
to  spring  up  about  1863,  and  grew  numerous  in  the  next  ten  or 
fifteen  years.  None  of  these  societies,  however,  was  of  any 
great  importance.  Professor  Thun  mentions  four  varieties  of 
them.  First,  the  Malikowsy,  a  handful  of  apparently  harmless 
and  amiable  enthusiasts — a  kind  of  Russian  Quakers — who 
believed  in  one  Malikov,  and  called  themselves  "  God-men," 
because  they  held  every  man  had  a  "  divine  spark  "  in  him,  and 
was  therefore  every  other  man's  equal  and  brother.  Second, 
the  Bakunists,  who  adopted  Bakunin's  programme  of  "deeds," 
but  did  not,  till  1875,  think  of  putting  it  to  practice.  Third, 
the  Lavrists,  who  sent  the  money  to  print  Lavrofifs  newspaper  in 
Zurich,  the  En  Avant,  and  who  seem  to  have  gradually  imbibed 
German  socialism  to  the  extent  of  thinking  the  Russian  com- 
mune a  reactionary  and  decaying  institution  not  worth  stimng 
a  finger  to  preserve,  and  who  called  for  the  nationalization  of 
land  and  capital.  And  fourth, — much  the  most  important 
society, — the  Tchaikowskists,  founded  in  1869  by  one  Tchaikow- 
ski,  who  is  now  a  teacher  in  London,  but  was  then  a  student  at 
St.  Petersburg.  Prince  Krapotkin  belonged  to  this  society, 
and  so  did  Sophia  Perowskaia.  It  was  at  first  a  convivial 
and  mutual  improvement  club,  but  from  discussing  forbidden 
subjects  and  circulating  among  its  members  forbidden  books  it 
grew  into  natural  antagonism  to  Government,  and  became  a 
focus  of  revolutionary  agitation.  Most  of  the  193  socialists 
who  were  tried  in  1874-7  belonged  to  it,  and  that  protracted 


Russian  Nihilism.  281 

trial  killed  the  society  and  put  an  end  to  the  mission  "  into  the 
people." 

Government  had  marked  the  new  propaganda  with  great 
jealousy.  In  Russia,  no  propaganda  among  the  peasants  can 
remain  unobserved.  When  a  stranger  arrives  at  a  Russian 
village,  he  is  immediately  the  common  talk,  whatever  he 
says  passes  from  mouth  to  mouth,  and  he  may  even  be  invited  to 
state  his  views  publicly  in  the  mir.  A  mission  conducted  under 
these  conditions  soon  attracted  the  notice  of  the  authorities,  who, 
in  1874,  discovered  it  in  thirty-seven  different  provinces  of 
Russia,  and  arrested  as  many  as  774  of  the  propagandists. 
Some  of  these  were  at  once  banished  administratively  to 
Siberia,  and  of  the  rest,  193  were,  four  years  afterwards,  brought 
up  for  trial  and  condemned.  With  these  apprehensions  the 
nihilist  movement  collapsed  for  the  moment.  Thun  states 
that  Lavroflfs  newspaper  during  that  period  adopted  a  tone  of 
despair,  and  the  revolutionists  who  escaped  arrest  recognised 
very  clearly  that  their  scheme  of  "  going  into  the  people  "  was 
a  complete  mistake,  and  that  some  safer  and  more  effective 
system  of  tactics  must  be  concocted.  They  fell  upon  two 
different  expedients.  The  first  was  the  plan  of  nihilist  coloni- 
zation. To  avoid  detection  by  the  authorities,  a  band  of 
revolutionists  settled  down  in  a  given  district  in  a  body,  got 
personally  acquainted  with  the  peasantry  about  them,  and  then, 
after  acquiring  a  sufficient  knowledge  of  their  characters,  pro- 
ceeded with  due  prudence  to  impart  their  ideas  to  those  who 
seemed  most  trustworthy,  hoping  in  this  way  to  be  able,  un- 
observed, eventually  to  leaven  the  whole  lump.  The  other 
plan  they  now  resorted  to  was  an  approach  to  the  tactics  of 
Bakunin,  and  in  the  very  year,  1876,  in  which  that  old  revolu- 
tionist died,  they  began  a  series  of  socialist  demonstrations  at 
Odessa,  Kasan,  and  elsewhere,  which  made  a  little  local  sensa- 
tion at  the  time.  This  was  the  very  opposite  kind  of  tactics  to 
the  cautious  system  of  colonization  that  was  pursued  simulta- 
neously with  it,  but  there  is  always  in  revolutionary  organiza- 
tion only  a  step  between  reticence  and  rashness.  Open  demon- 
strations like  those  practised  at  that  period  were  simply  suicidal 
folly  in  Russia,  where  the  forces  of  the  Government  were  so 
immeasurably  superior  to  the  forces  of  the  demonstrationists. 


282  Contemporary  Socialism. 

In  1878  they  changed  tactics  again,  inaugurating  that 
system  of  terrorism  by  which  they  are  best  known  in  the 
West,  and  which  has  given  them  a  name  there  at  which  the 
world  turns  pale.  The  determination  to  adopt  this  system  of 
tactics  sprang  from  an  accidental  circumstance.  The  day  after 
the  trial  of  the  193  ended,  one  of  their  comrades,  the  young 
woman  Vera  Sassulitch,  called  on  General  Trepoff,  the  head 
of  the  St.  Petersburg  police,  on  pretence  of  business,  and  while 
he  was  reading  her  papers,  shot  him  with  a  revolver,  flung 
her  weapon  on  the  ground,  and  allowed  herself  to  be  quietly 
arrested  ;  and  when  she  was  brought  up  for  trial,  pled  justifica- 
tion on  the  ground  that  her  act  was  merely  retaliation  on  the 
General  for  having  subjected  a  friend  of  hers,  a  young  medical 
student,  to  a  brutal  and  causeless  flogging  while  in  prison  on 
a  political  charge.  The  court  having  acquitted  her,  she  was 
received  by  the  public  with  every  demonstration  of  enthusiasm, 
and  it  was  this  remarkable  public  sympathy  that  made  the 
revolutionaries  terrorists.  They  resolved  to  take  up  V.  Sassu- 
litch's  idea  of  retaliation,  and  apply  it  on  a  great  scale.  The 
whole  public  of  Russia  was  at  that  time  considerably  flushed 
with  indignation  against  the  imperial  Government.  The  war 
in  Turkey  had  revealed,  as  wars  always  do,  a  great  deal  of 
rottenness  in  the  public  administration ;  it  had  brought  nothing 
but  humiliation  and  debt  upon  the  country,  and  it  had  exacted 
cruel  sacrifices  from  the  people  merely  to  confer  on  the  Bul- 
garians the  political  and  constitutional  liberty  which  was  still 
denied  to  the  Russians  themselves.  For  the  moment  the  old 
cry  for  a  constitution  rose  again  in  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow, 
and  there  was  a  deep  feeling  far  beyond  the  circles  of  the  revo- 
lutionists that  an  end  should  be  put  to  the  autocratic  regime. 
The  revolutionists  found  powerful  encouragement  in  all  this 
outbreak  of  displeasure.  Stepniak,  who  was  himself  one  of  the 
most  active  of  them  at  that  period,  says  their  real  strength  lay, 
not  in  their  numbers — which  he  admits  to  have  been  few — but 
in  the  general  sympathy  they  received  from  what  he  calls  the 
revolutionary  nation  around  them.  They  had  however  special 
wrongs  of  their  own  to  avenge  ;  hundreds  of  their  friends  had 
been  transported  without  trial ;  and  in  the  case  of  the  193, 
whose  trial  was  just  over,  the  fiew  who  had  been  acquitted  were 


Russian  Nihilism.  283 

nevertheless  denied  their  liberty  by  the  Czar,  and  banished 
administratively  to  Siberia  after  all ;  so  that  while  Russian 
society  was  clamouring  on  public  grounds  for  the  downfall 
of  the  autocratic  system,  the  revolutionists,  for  revenge,  deter- 
mined upon  the  death  of  the  autocrat  himself.  The  various 
secret  societies  had  united  into  a  single  body,  called  first 
the  "Troglodytes,"  and  then  "Land  and  Liberty,"  for  the 
better  prosecution  of  the  nihilist  colonization  scheme ;  but  in 
1879  they  broke  again  into  two  parties,  one  of  which,  the  Will 
of  the  People  party,  adopted  terrorism  as  its  exclusive  busi- 
ness for  the  time,  issued,  through  its  famous  executive  com- 
mittee, sentences  of  death  on  the  Czar  and  the  State  officials  ; 
and  after  making  ten  attempts  on  high  officials,  five  of  them 
fatal,  and  four  attempts  on  the  Czar  himself,  finally  succeeded 
in  their  fifth  on  the  13th  of  March,  1881.  With  this  party  the 
political  side  of  their  programme  overshadowed  the  socialistic, 
and  their  first  demand  from  the  new  Czar  was  for  a  consti- 
tution. 

The  other  party — the  party  of  the  Black  Division — is  an 
agrarian  party,  living  on  the  growing  discontent  of  the 
peasantry,  and  nursing  their  cry  for  what  in  Russia  is  known 
as  the  Black  Division.  It  is  an  old  belief  among  the  Russian 
people  that  when  the  land  possessed  at  any  time  by  the  com- 
munes should  become  too  small  for  the  increasing  population  of 
the  communes,  there  would  be  a  new  division  of  all  the  land  ot 
the  country,  including,  of  course,  the  great  estates  now  owned 
by  the  noblesse^  so  that  every  inhabitant  might  be  once  more 
accommodated  with  his  proper  share  of  the  soil.  This  great 
secular  redistribution  is  the  black  division,  and  it  belongs  as 
naturally  to  the  Russian  peasants'  system  of  agrarian  ideas  as 
the  little  local  and  periodical  divisions  that  take  place  within 
the  communes  themselves.  The  Black  Division  section  of  the 
revolutionists  are  terrorist  in  their  methods  like  the  other 
section,  but  they  care  nothing  about  a  constitution,  which  they 
say  is  only  a  demand  of  the  bourgeoisie^  but  of  no  interest  or 
good  to  the  peasant  at  all.  They  have  the  old  aversion  to 
centralized  government,  which  we  have  seen  to  be  almost  the 
tradition  of  Russian  revolutionists  ;  they  are  all  for  strengthen- 
ing the   communes,  and  for  a  light  federal  connection :  and 


284  Contemporary  Socialism. 

of  all  phases  of  the  Russian  revolutionary  movement  under 
the  reign  of  the  present  Czar  theirs  is  the  most  important, 
because  it  is  founding  itself  on  real  and  deepening  rural  dis- 
content, and  becoming  substantially  a  peasants'  cry  for  more 
land  and  less  rent  and  taxes. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  astonishing  growth  of  a 
Russian  proletariat  since  the  Emancipation  Act.  Professor 
Janson,  an  eminent  Russian  statistician,  calculated  that  as 
many  as  a  fourth  of  the  people  of  St.  Petersburg — 229,000  out 
of  876,000 — got  public  relief  in  the  year  1884.  Stepniak,  in 
his  recent  work  on  the  Russian  peasantry,  asserts  that  a  third 
of  the  rural  population,  or  20,000,000  souls  in  all,  are  in  the 
condition  of  absolute  proletarians,  and  his  account  of  the 
situation  is  entirely  supported  by  the  descriptions  of  a  com- 
petent and  unprejudiced  German  economist.  Professor  Al- 
phonse  Thun,  who  speaks  partly  from  the  results  of  official 
inquiries  instituted  by  the  Russian  Government  into  the 
subject,  and  partly  from  his  own  personal  observation  during 
a  continuous  residence  of  two  years  in  the  country.  As  the 
subject  is  of  importance  to  the  student  of  socialistic  institutions 
as  well  as  of  the  nihilist  movement,  I  shall  make  no  apology 
for  devoting  some  observations  to  its  explanation. 

In  the  first  place,  though  it  has  never  been  well  understood 
in  Western  Europe,  some  ten  per  cent,  of  the  Russian  rural 
population  have  no  legal  claim  to  a  share  of  the  land  at  all ; 
these  are  old  men  who  are  past  working,  widows  with  children 
too  young  to  be  able  to  work,  and  men  who  at  the  time  of 
the  Emancipation  were  personal  servants  of  the  great  land- 
owners, and  consequently  not  members  of  any  village  com- 
mune. Men  of  this  last  class  may  reside  in  a  village,  and  may 
keep  a  shop  or  practise  a  trade  there ;  but  not  being  born 
villagers,  they  possess  no  right  to  participate  in  the  distribution 
of  the  village  land.  They  are  as  much  outside  the  commun- 
istic system  as  the  nobles  or  the  foreign  residents.  Russian 
citizenship  alone  is  not  enough  to  give  a  right  to  the  land ; 
local  birth  in  a  commune  is  also  an  essential  pre-requisite,  and 
ability  to  work  is  another.  A  family  gets  one  share  for  every 
able-bodied  member  it  contains  ;  the  share  is  therefore  called 
a  "  soul  "  of  land  ;  and  although  between  one  distribution  and 


Russian  Nihilism.  285 

another  the  widow  may  still  retain  the  "soul"  that  belonged 
to  her  husband,  and  hire  a  hand  to  work  it,  yet  on  the  next 
redistribution  she  must  give  it  up  unless  she  has  a  son  who 
in  the  meantime  has  grown  to  man's  estate.  The  landless 
widow  and  orphan  must  have  been  an  occasional  incident  of 
the  Russian  village  system  from  all  times  ;  but  the  incursion 
of  dismissed  domestic  menials  with  no  birthright  in  the  com- 
mune has  arisen  only  in  recent  years,  when,  in  consequence  of 
a  conspiracy  of  causes,  so  many  of  the  nobility  have  been 
obliged  to  reduce  their  establishments. 

In  the  next  place,  a  communistic  tenure  which  gives  every 
new  comer  a  right  to  share  in  the  land  of  his  native  village 
on  an  equal  footing  with  those  who  are  already  in  possession 
could  hardly  fail  to  lead  to  excessive  subdivision,  and  in  Russia 
at  this  moment  scarce  one  family  in  a  hundred  has  land 
enough  to  furnish  its  maintenance  for  half  the  year.  The 
usual  size  of  holding  is  ten  acres,  of  which — cultivated  as  they 
are  on  the  old  three-field  system — one  third  is  always  fallow, 
and  the  remainder,  in  consequence  of  the  rude  method  of  agri- 
culture that  prevails,  yields  only  two,  or  at  most  three,  returns 
of  the  seed.  They  have  no  pasture,  because  at  the  time 
of  the  emancipation  they  preferred  to  take  out  their  whole 
claim  in  arable ;  and,  having  no  pasture,  they  cannot  keep 
cattle  as  they  formerly  did  because  they  cannot  get  manure. 
According  to  the  information  of  Professor  Thun,  in  1872  8  per 
cent,  of  the  families  had  no  cow,  and  4  per  cent,  no  horse  ;  and 
Stepniak  says  the  inventory  of  horses  taken  for  military  pur- 
poses in  1882  showed  that  one-fourth  of  the  peasant  families  had 
then  no  horse.  Russia  is,  in  fact,  a  vast  continent  of  crofters, 
practising  primitive  husbandry  on  mere  "  cat's-plots  "  of  land, 
and  depending  for  the  greater  part  of  their  subsistence  on 
some  auxiliary  trade.  In  one  respect  they  have  the  advantage 
over  our  Scotch  crofters ;  they  practise,  in  many  cases,  skilled 
trades.  Of  course  they  work  as  ploughmen  or  fishermen  when 
that  sort  of  work  is  wanted,  or  they  will  hire  a  piece  of  waste 
land  from  a  neighbouring  owner  and  bring  it  into  rude  culti- 
vation ;  but  every  variety  of  craft  is  to  be  found  among  them. 
They  are  weavers,  hatters,  cabinet-makers,  workers  in  metals ; 
they  make  shoes,  or  images,  or  candles,  or  musical  instruments, 


286  Contemporary  Socialism. 

or  grindstones ;  they  dress  furs,  they  knit  lace,  they  train 
singing-birds.  According  to  the  official  inquiry,  most  of  the 
goods  of  some  of  the  best  commercial  houses  of  Moscow, 
trading  in  Parisian  silk  hats  and  Viennese  furniture,  are 
manufactured  by  these  peasants  in  their  rural  villages,  A 
curious  and  very  remarkable  characteristic  is  mentioned  by 
Thun  :  not  only  has  every  Russian  his  bye-industry,  but  every 
village  has  a  different  bye-industry  from  its  neighbour.  One 
is  a  village  of  coopers — a  very  thriving  trade,  it  appears; 
another  a  village  of  tailors — a  declining  one,  in  consequence 
of  the  competition  of  ready-made  stuff  from  the  towns  ;  another 
— and  there  are  several  such — may  be  a  village  of  beggars, 
with  mendicity  for  their  second  staff ;  and  another  a  village  of 
seamen,  going  in  a  body  in  spring  to  the  Baltic  or  the  Volga, 
and  leaving  only  their  women  and  children  to  tend  the  farm 
till  their  return  in  the  autumn.  The  Russians  always  work  in 
artels  whether  at  home  or  abroad,  and  to  work  in  artels  they 
must  of  course  follow  the  same  industry.  Their  individual 
earnings  in  their  auxiliary  occupations  are  comparatively  good  ; 
they  make  three-fourths  of  their  annual  income  from  that 
source  ;  but  it  seems  every  trade  is  now  overcrowded,  and 
there  is  some  difficulty  in  obtaining  constant  employment. 

Then  the  burdens  of  the  peasantry  are  very  heavy.  In 
Russia  the  superior  classes  enjoy  many  exemptions  from  taxa- 
tion, and  the  public  revenue  is  taken  mainly  from  the  peasant 
classes.  The  annual  redemption  money  they  have  to  pay  to 
the  State  for  their  land  is  a  most  serious  obligation,  and 
between  one  thing  and  another  the  burdens  on  the  land  in  a 
vast  number  of  cases  exceed  its  net  return  very  considerably. 
Professor  Thun  states,  that  in  2,009  cases  of  letting  holdings 
which  had  occurred  in  the  province  of  Moscow  at  the  time  he 
wrote,  the  average  rent  received  was  only  3  roubles  66  kopecks 
per  "  soul  "  (land-share),  while  the  average  taxation  was  10 
roubles  30  kopecks.  Stepniak  says  that  in  the  thirty-seven 
provinces  of  European  Russia  the  class  who  were  formerly 
State  peasants  pay  in  taxes  of  every  description  no  less  than 
92" 76  per  cent,  of  the  average  net  produce  of  their  land  ;  and 
that  the  class  who  were  formerly  serfs  of  private  owners  pay 
as  much  as  192-25  per  cent,  of  the  net  produce  of  theirs.     Land- 


Russian  Nihilism.  287 

owning  on  these  terms  is  manifestly  a  questionable  privilege, 
and  the  moiijik  pays  his  land  taxes  as  the  Scotch  crofter  has 
sometimes  to  pay  his  rent,  not  out  of  the  produce  of  his  hold- 
ing, but  out  of  the  wages  of  his  auxiliary  labour ;  but  the 
Scotch  crofter,  under  his  system  of  individual  tenure,  has  one 
great  resource  which  is  wanting  to  the  other :  he  can  always 
cut  the  knot  of  his  troubles  by  throwing  up  his  holding,  if  he 
chooses,  and  emigrating.  To  the  Russian  peasant  emigration 
brings  no  relief.  He  is  born  a  proprietor,  and  cannot  escape 
the  obligation  of  his  position  wherever  he  may  go.  He  may 
try  to  let  his  ground — and  in  many  cases  he  does — but,  as  we 
see,  he  cannot  often  get  enough  rent  to  meet  the  dues.  He 
may  leave  his  village,  if  he  will,  but  his  village  liabilities  travel 
with  him  wherever  he  may  settle.  He  cannot  obtain  work 
anywhere  in  Russia  without  showing  his  pass  from  his  own 
commune  ;  and  since,  under  the  principle  of  joint  liability  that 
rules  in  the  communistic  system,  the  members  of  the  commune 
who  remain  at  home  would  have  to  pay  the  emigrant's  arrears 
if  he  failed  to  pay  them  himself,  they  are  not  likely  to  renew 
the  pass  to  a  defaulter.  The  Russian  peasants  are  thus  nearly 
as  much  adstricti  glehce  as  they  ever  were ;  they  are  now  under 
the  power  of  the  commune  as  completely  as  they  were  before 
under  the  power  of  their  masters ;  and  their  difficulty  is  still 
how  they  can  possibly  obtain  emancipation.  Sometimes  they 
will  defy  the  commune,  forego  the  advantage  of  a  lawful 
pass,  crowd  the  ranks  of  that  large  body  in  Russia  who  are 
known  as  the  "  illegal  men,"  and  sometimes,  we  are  assured 
by  Professor  Thun,  a  whole  village,  every  man  and  every 
family,  will  secretly  disappear  in  a  body  and  seek  refuge  from 
the  tax-collector  by  settling  in  the  steppes.  The  natural  right 
of  every  man  to  the  land  is  thus,  in  the  principal  country 
where  any  attempt  is  made  to  realize  it,  nothing  but  a  harass- 
ing pecuniar3^  debt. 

Now  this  class  of  worse  than  landless  emigrants — men  who 
carry  their  land  as  a  perpetual  burden  on  their  back  from 
which  they  can  get  no  respite — is  already  very  numerous  in 
Russia.  Thun  says  there  are  millions  of  them.  As  far  back  as 
1872,  nearly  half  the  town  population  of  Moscow  and  more 
than  a  fifth  of  the  population  of  the  landward  district  were 


288  Contemporary  Socialism. 

strangers,  -who  were  inscribed  members  of  rural  communes 
elsewhere ;  and  in  many  purely  country  districts  some  14  per 
cent,  of  the  people  have  no  houses  because  they  are  not  living 
in  the  villages  they  belong  to.  Sir  Robert  Morier  says  in  his 
report  to  the  Foreign  Office  in  September,  1887,  on  Pauperism 
in  Russia  (p.  2)  :  "  It  is  officially  stated  that  in  each  of  the 
larger  provinces,  such  as  Kursk,  Tambow,  Kostroma,  etc.,  over 
100,000  peasants  have  abandoned  the  plot  of  ground  granted 
to  them  (8  acres)  on  one  pretext  or  another  in  order  to  seek 
means  of  subsistence  elsewhere.  (This  probably  means  flock- 
ing to  the  larger  towns.)  The  number  of  beggars  in  71 
Governments  was  stated  to  be  300,000,  of  which  182,000  were 
peasant  proprietors.  This  number  is,  however,  far  below  the 
mark."  But,  as  we  learn  from  Stepniak,  the  bulk  of  the  land- 
less peasants,  i.e.  those  who  no  longer  cultivate  their  holdings, 
do  not  leave  their  native  villages,  but  seek  employment  as 
hirelings  in  the  village  itself  or  in  its  neighbourhood,  and 
wander  as  day  labourers  from  one  master  to  another.  Their 
families  continue  to  live  in  their  old  cottage  in  the  village, 
and  the  father  returns  to  it  when  out  of  employment. 

Their  land  is  generally  taken  by  a  class  of  small  usurers 
(koulalcs)  who  have  grown  up  in  every  Russian  village  since 
the  emancipation.  These  koulaks  are  in  most  cases  fellow- 
peasants  who  have  saved  some  money,  but  they  are  frequently 
strangers  who  have  come  and  opened  a  store  in  the  place,  and 
have  no  right  of  their  own  to  a  share  in  the  land  and  in  the 
councils  of  the  village.  Stepniak  mentions  one  province  where 
as  much  as  from  24  to  36  per  cent,  of  the  land  is  concentrated 
into  the  hands  of  these  rich  usurers.  Even  the  peasants  who 
still  retain  their  land  in  their  own  hands  are  often  deeply 
indebted  to  them,  and  in  some  cases  part  with  bits  of  their 
land  without  parting  with  all ;  and  the  general  tendency  of 
the  present  economic  situation  is  to  divide  the  peasantry  of 
every  village  into  a  class  of  comparatively  rich  peasants,  on  the 
one  hand,  holding  and  cultivating  most  of  the  land,  and  a 
larger  class  of  rural  proletarians,  without  land  and  having 
nothing  to  live  by  but  their  manual  trade.  The  tendency,  in 
short,  is  towards  the  break-up  of  the  communal  tenure,  and 
instead  of  the  Russian  Commune  invading  Europe,  as  Cavour 


Russian  Nihilism.  289 

once  said  there  was  fear  it  would  do,  we  are  likely  to  see  the 
individual  tenure  of  Western  Europe  invading  Russia  and 
superseding  primitive  rural  institutions  in  that  country,  as  it 
has  already  superseded  them  in  others.  "  It  is  quite  evident," 
says  Stepniah.  "  that  Russia  is  marching  in  this  direction.  If 
nothing  happens  to  check  or  hinder  the  process  of  interior  dis- 
integration in  our  villages,  in  another  generation  we  shall  have 
on  one  side  an  agricultural  proletariat  of  sixty  or  seventy 
millions,  and  on  the  other  a  few  thousand  landlords,  mostly 
former  koulaks  and  mir-eaters,  in  possession  of  all  the  land."  It 
is  legally  permissible  at  present  for  a  Russian  commune,  if  it  so 
choose,  to  abolish  its  communal  system  of  property  and  adopt 
individual  property  instead  of  it ;  and  although  this  has  been 
very  seldom  done  as  yet,  we  are  told  by  Thun  that  the  rich 
peasants  and  the  very  poor  peasants  are  both  strongly  in  favour 
of  the  step,  because  it  would  give  the  one  permanent  ownership 
of  the  land  and  the  other  permanent  relief  from  its  burdens. 
When  a  commune  gets  divided  in  this  way  into  a  rich  class  of 
members  and  a  poor  class,  the  old  brotherliness  and  mutual 
helpfulness  of  the  Russian  village  are  said  by  the  same 
authority  always  to  disappear  and  a  more  selfish  spirit  to  take 
their  place ;  but  then  it  should  be  remembered  how  much 
easier  it  is  to  assist  a  neighbour  out  of  a  little  difficulty  of  the 
way  than  to  meet  the  unremitting  claims  of  a  class  that  have 
sunk  into  permanent  poverty.  Anyhow,  the  temptation  is 
equally  strong  on  both  parties  to  escape  from  the  worries  of 
their  present  situation  through  the  rich  buying  out  the  poor. 

Another  tendency  working  in  the  same  direction  is  the  rapid 
dissolution  of  the  old  system  of  large  house-communities  that 
prevailed  before  the  emancipation.  The  average  household 
has  been  reduced  from  seven  and  a  half  to  five  souls,  the 
married  children  setting  up  houses  of  their  own  instead  of 
dwelling  under  one  roof  with  their  father  and  grandfather. 
The  house  is  a  mere  hut,  with  no  furniture  but  a  table  and  a 
wooden  bench  used  by  night  for  a  bed,  but  still  the  separate 
menage  has  increased  to  an  embarrassing  extent  the  expenses  of 
the  peasant's  living  at  the  very  time  that  other  circumstances 
have  reduced  his  resources.  The  reason  for  the  break-up  of 
the  house-communities  has  been  the  desire  to  escape  partly 

u 


290  Contempoj-ary  Socialism, 

from  th*e  tyranny  of  the  head  of  the  household,  but  chiefly 
from  the  incessant  quarrels  that  prevailed  between  the  several 
members  about  the  amount  they  each  contributed  to  the 
common  funds  as  compared  with  the  amount  they  ate  and 
drank  out  of  them.  One  of  the  brothers  goes  to  St.  Petersburg 
during  the  winter  months  as  a  cabman  and  brings  back  a 
hundred  roubles,  while  another  gets  work  as  a  forester  near 
home,  and  earns  no  more  than  twenty-five.  Now,  according 
to  an  author  quoted  by  Stepniak,  who  is  describing  a  family 
among  whom  he  has  lived,  the  question  always  is :  "  "Why 
should  he  (the  forester)  consume  with  such  avidity  the  tea 
and  sugar  dearly  purchased  with  the  cabman's  money  ?  And 
in  general,  why  should  this  tea  be  absorbed  with  such  greedi- 
ness by  all  the  numerous  members  of  the  household — by  the 
elder  brother,  for  instance,  who  alone  drank  something  like 
eighty  cups  a  day  (the  whole  family  consumed  about  nine 
hundred  cups  per  diem)  whilst  he  did  not  move  a  finger 
towards  earning  all  this  tea  and  sugar  ?  Whilst  the  cabman 
was  freezing  in  the  cold  night  air,  or  busying  himself  with 
some  drunken  passenger,  or  was  being  abused  and  beaten  by  a 
policeman  on  duty  near  some  theatre,  this  elder  brother  was 
comfortably  stretched  upon  his  belly,  on  the  warm  family 
oven,  pouring  out  some  nonsense  about  twenty-seven  bears 
whom  he  had  seen  rambling  through  the  country  with  their 
whelps  in  search  of  new  land  for  settlement."  And  so  the 
quarrel  goes  round  ;  always  the  old  difficulty  of  meum  and 
tuum,  so  hard  to  reconcile  except  under  a  regime  of  individual 
property. 

In  fact,  the  shifts  to  which  the  Russian  peasantry,  like 
other  peasantries  elsewhere,  have  been  reduced  to  solve  this 
difficulty  in  the  management  of  their  common  land  constitute 
one  main  cause  of  their  agricultural  backwardness  and  their 
consequent  poverty.  Elisee  Reclus  calculates  that  if  the 
Russian  fields  were  cultivated  like  those  of  Great  Britain, 
Russia  could  produce,  instead  of  six  hundred  and  fifty  million 
hectolitres  of  com  annually,  about  five  milliards,  which  would 
be  sufficient  to  feed  a  population  of  five  hundred  million  souls. 
A  few  lessons  in  good  husbandry  will  do  much  more  for  the 
comfort  of  a  people  than  many  changes  of  social  organization ; 


Russian  Nihilism.  291 

but  good  husbandry  is  virtually  impossible  under  a  sj'stem  of 
unstable  tenure,  wliich  turns  a  man  necessarily  out  of  his  hold- 
ing every  few  years  for  the  purpose  of  a  new  distribution  of 
the  land,  and  which  compels  him  to  take  his  holding,  when  he 
gets  it,  in  some  thirty  or  forty  scattered  plots.  Redistributions, 
it  is  true,  do  not  occur  so  very  frequently  as  we  might  suppose. 
As  Russian  land  is  all  cultivated  on  a  three  years'  rotation,  one 
might  be  apt  to  look  for  a  new  distribution  every  three  years, 
but  that  almost  never  occurs.  Thun  states  that  in  the  province 
of  Moscow  during  the  twenty  j-ears  1858-1878  the  average 
interval  of  distribution  was  12^  years,  four  rotations  ;  that  49 
per  cent,  of  the  communes  had  a  distribution  only  once  in  15 
years,  and  37  per  cent,  only  once  in  20  years.  The  dislike  to 
frequent  distributions  is  growing,  on  the  obvious  and  very 
reasonable  ground  that  they  either  discourage  a  man  from 
doing  well  by  his  land,  or  they  inflict  on  him  the  grave  in- 
justice of  depriving  him  of  the  ground  he  has  himself  improved 
before  he  has  reaped  from  it  the  due  reward  of  his  labour. 
The  tendency  towards  individual  property  is  therefore  strongly- 
at  work  here,  and  as  this  system  of  periodical  redistribution  is 
established  merely  to  give  every  man  that  natural  right  by 
virtue  of  his  birth  to  a  share  in  the  land,  which  is  uow  in  so 
many  cases  such  a  delusive  irony,  the  resistance  to  the  new 
tendency  cannot  be  expected  to  be  very  resolute.  The  runrig 
system  of  cultivation,  which  prevails  in  Russia  in  the  same 
form  as  it  did  in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  does  not  give  any 
similar  appearance  of  decay.  Stepniak  says  the  peasants  still 
prefer  that  arrangement  because  it  allows  room  for  perfect 
fairness — perfect  reconciliation  of  the  meum  and  tuum — in  the 
distribution  of  their  most  precious  commodity,  the  land,  which 
alwaj's  presents  great  variety  as  to  quality  of  soil  and  situation 
with  respect  to  roads,  water,  the  village,  etc.  Under  a  com- 
munal system  with  many  members  this  method  of  arrange- 
ment is  almost  indispensable  to  avoid  quarrels  and  prevent  the 
indolent  from  shirking  their  proper  share  of  the  work,  but  its 
agricultural  disadvantages  are  so  great  that  it  never  long  resists 
an  improving  husbandry.  Although  an  owner,  the  Russian 
peasant,  in  consequence  of  the  shifting  nature  of  his  subject,  is 
said  by  Stepniak  to  have  none  of  that  passionate  feeling  of 


292  Contemporary  Socialism. 

ownership  and  that  profound  delight  in  his  land  which  are 
characteristic  of  the  peasant  proprietors  of  the  West,  but 
he  has — what  is  really  the  same  thing — a  deep  sense  of 
personal  dignity  from  its  possession,  and  he  feels  himself 
to  have  lost  caste  if  he  is  forced  to  give  up  his  holding  and 
become  a  mere  hatrak^  or  wage  labourer.  All  the  pride  of 
ownership  is  already  there,  and  in  the  changes  of  the  imme- 
diate future  it  will  have  plenty  of  opportunity  for  asserting 
its  place. 

Under  the  pressure  of  this  singular  economic  movement,  the 
nihilist  agitation  is  now  developing  largely  into  a  peasants'  cry 
for  more  land  and  less  rent  and  taxes.  As  I  have  said,  the 
Russian  peasantry  look  for  the  great  black  division  once  in  an 
age.  The  "  Old  Believers  "  mix  this  idea  up  with  their  dreams 
of  a  great  millennial  reign,  and  keep  on  thinking  that  the  day 
after  to-morrow  is  to  bring  in  the  happy  period  before  the 
end  of  the  world,  when  truth  is  to  prevail  and  the  land  is  to 
be  equally  divided  among  all ;  and  a  feeling  easily  gets  about 
among  the  peasantry  generally  that  the  "  black  division  "  is  at 
last  coming.  Such  a  feeling  was  very  widespread  during  the 
reign  of  the  late  Czar,  and,  indeed,  is  still  so.  Rumours  iiy 
every  now-  and  then  from  hamlet  to  hamlet  like  wildfire,  no 
one  knows  whence  or  how,  that  the  division  is  to  be  made  in  a 
month,  or  a  week,  or  a  year  ;  that  the  Czar  has  decreed  it,  and 
when  it  does  not  come,  that  the  Czar's  wishes  have  for  the  time 
been  thwarted,  as  they  had  so  often  been  thwarted  before,  by 
the  selfish  machinations  of  the  nobility.  For  the  peasant  has 
a  profound  and  touching  belief  in  his  Czar.  There  may  be 
agrarian  socialism  in  his  creed,  but  it  is  not  the  agrarian 
socialism  of  the  schools.  The  first  article  of  his  faith — and  it 
would  appear  to  be  the  natural  faith  of  the  peasant  all  the 
world  over — is  that  the  earth  is  the  Lord's  and  not  the  nobi- 
lity's ;  but  his  second  is  that  the  Czar  is  the  Lord's  steward, 
sent  for  the  very  purpose  of  dividing  the  land  justly  among 
his  people.  If  the  peasant  hopes  for  the  black  division,  he 
hopes  for  it  from  the  Czar.  The  Emancipation  Act  has  been 
far  from  giving  him  the  land  or  the  liberty  he  looked  for,  but 
he  believes — and  nothing  will  shake  him  out  of  the  belief — 
that  the  Emancipation  Law  which  the  Czar  actually  decreed 


Russian  NiJiilism.  293 

was  a  righteous  law  that  would  have  met  all  the  people's 
wishes  and  claims,  but  that  this  law  has  been  altered  seriously 
to  their  disadvantage,  under  the  influence  of  the  nobility,  in 
the  process  of  carrying  it  into  execution.  But  his  confidence 
always  is  that  the  Czar  will  still  interfere  and  put  everything 
to  rights.  And  when,  only  a  few  years  ago,  the  revolutionist 
Stephanovitch  stirred  up  some  disturbances  in  Southern  Russia, 
which  were  commonly  dignified  at  the  time  with  the  name  of 
a  peasants'  insurrection,  he  was  only  able  to  succeed  in  doing 
what  he  did  by  first  going  to  St.  Petersburg  with  a  petition 
from  the  peasants  of  the  district  to  the  Czar,  and  then  issuing 
on  his  return  a  false  proclamation  in  the  Czar's  name,  com- 
manding the  people  to  rise  against  the  nobility,  who  were 
declared  to  be  persistently  obstructing  and  defeating  his 
Majesty's  good  and  just  intentions  for  his  loyal  people's  wel- 
fare. If  an  imperial  proclamation  were  issued  to  the  contrary 
ejBfect — a  proclamation  condemning  or  repudiating  the  opera- 
tions of  the  peasants — the  latter  would  refuse  to  believe  it  to 
be  genuine.  That  occurs  again  and  again  about  this  very  idea 
of  the  black  division,  which  has  obtained  possession  of  the 
brains  of  the  rural  population.  It  often  happens  that  in  a 
season  of  excitement,  like  the  time  of  the  Russo-Turkish  war, 
or  of  famine,  like  the  winter  of  1880-81,  the  rumours  and  ex- 
pectations of  the  black  division  become  especially  definite  and 
lively,  and  lead  to  meetings  and  discussions  and  disturbances 
which  the  Government  think  it  prudent  to  stop.  In  1879  the 
Minister  of  the  Interior,  with  this  object  in  view,  issued  a  cir- 
cular contradicting  the  rumours  that  were  spread  abroad,  which 
was  read  in  all  the  villages  and  affixed  to  the  public  buildings. 
It  stated,  as  plainly  as  it  was  possible  to  state  anything,  that 
there  would  be  no  redistribution,  and  that  the  landlords  would 
retain  their  property ;  but  it  produced  no  effect.  Professor 
Engelhardt  wrote  one  of  his  published  '•'  Letters  from  a  Village  " 
at  that  very  moment,  and  states  that  the  moujiks  would  not 
understand  the  circular  to  mean  anything  more  than  a  request 
that  they  would  for  a  time  abstain  from  gossiping  at  random 
about  the  coming  redistribution.  One  of  their  reasons  for 
making  this  odd  misinterpretation  is  curious.  The  circular 
warned  the   people    against   "  evil-intentioned "   persons   who 


294  Conte7nporary  Socialism. 

disseminated  false  reports,  and  gave  instructions  to  the  author- 
ities to  apprehend  them.  These  evil-intentioned  persons  were, 
of  course,  the  nihilist  agitators,  who  were  making  use  of  these 
reports  to  foment  an  agrarian  insurrection  ;  but  the  peasants 
took  these  enemies  of  the  Government  to  be  the  landlords  and 
others  who  had,  they  believed,  set  themselves  against  the  re- 
distribution movement  and  prevented  the  benevolence  and 
righteous  purposes  of  the  Czar  from  descending  upon  his  people. 
In  some  parts  of  Russia  there  has  sprung  up  since  1870  a  group 
of  peasantry  known  as  "  the  medalmen,"  who  have  persuaded 
themselves  that  the  Czar  not  only  wants  to  give  them  more 
land,  but  has  •  long  since  decreed  their  exemption  from  all 
taxation  except  the  poll  tax.  They  say,  moreover,  that  he 
struck  a  medal  to  commemorate  this  gracious  design  of  his, 
which  has  been,  as  usual,  so  wickedly  frustrated  by  his  sub- 
ordinates ;  and  that  even,  as  things  are,  one  has  but  to  get 
hold  of  one  of  these  medals  and  show  it  to  the  collector,  and 
the  collector  is  bound  to  give  the  holder  the  exemption  he 
wants.  The  medals  to  which  so  much  virtue  is  ascribed  are 
merely  the  medals  struck  to  commemorate  the  Emancipation 
of  the  Serfs  ;  but  the  "  medalmen,"  who  are  generally  men  that 
have  parted  with  their  land,  sold  their  houses,  and  settled  at 
the  mines,  pay  very  high  prices  for  one  of  these  medals,  wear 
it  constantly  about  their  necks,  and  think  it  will  secure 
them  a  genuine  respite  from  the  burden  of  taxation  they  have 
to  bear. 

The  nihilist  propagandists  think — and  the  idea  seems  very 
remarkable— that  this  childish  and  ignorant  confidence  in  the 
Czar  will  not  be  able  to  stand  much  longer  the  strain  of  the 
increasing  difficulties  of  the  rural  situation.  The  propagan- 
dists make  it  their  business  to  keep  alive  the  idea  of  the  black 
division  in  the  hearts  of  the  moujiks,  and  make  use  of  every 
successive  disappointment  at  its  continued  delay  as  an  instru- 
ment of  alienating  the  affections  of  the  people  from  the  throne. 
A  peasantry  are  very  slow  to  throw  over  old  sentiments,  and 
will  suffer  long  before  breaking  with  the  past,  but  they  take  a 
sure  grip  of  their  own  interest,  and  they  will  turn  sometimes 
very  decisively  and  very  gregariously  to  new  deliverers.  The 
Eussian  peasants  see  themselves  settled  on  plots  of  ground  too 


Russian  Nihilism.  295 

small  to  work  with,  profit,  and  overburdened  with  taxes ;  they 
have  to  pay  sixty  per  cent,  of  all  their  earning?  in  dues  of  all 
kinds  on  their  land  ;  and  they  cast  their  eyes  abroad  and  see 
two-thirds  of  the  country  still  unpossessed  by  the  people,  one- 
half  still  owned  by  the  State,  and  one-sixth  by  the  greater 
landowners ;  and  with  the  communistic  ideas  in  which  they 
have  been  nursed,  they  feel  that  it  is  time  for  a  new  division 
of  the  greater  order  to  take  place.  A  gigantic  crofter  question 
is  impending,  and  this  agrarian  agitation  for  more  laud  is 
likely  enough  to  make  nihilism  a  more  formidable  thing  in  the 
future  than  it  has  been  in  the  past.  Hitherto  it  has  taken  little 
hold  of  the  peasantry.  At  first  it  was  a  movement  of  educated 
young  Russia  merely,  and  might  be  counted  with  the  ordinary 
intellectual  excesses  of  youth.  It  only  became  a  serious  poli- 
tical force  after  the  Emancipation  Act;  but  it  was  still  a 
movement  of  the  upper  classes,  and  in  spite  of  immense  exer- 
tions it  has  remained  so.  The  situation,  however,  is  rapidly 
changing,  and  with  the  rise — so  remarkable  in  many  ways— of 
a  numerous  rural  proletariat  in  the  country  that  was  supposed 
to  enjoy  special  protection  against  it,  with  the  growing  distress 
and  discontent  of  the  peasantry,  with  the  louder  and  more 
persistent  cries  for  the  black  division,  which  their  hereditary 
conception  of  agrarian  justice  suggests  to  them  as  the  only 
solution  of  their  troubles,  who  will  say  what  to-morrow  may 
bring  forth? 

Meanwhile  the  Will  of  the  People  party  has  continued  its 
activity.  We  still  hear  occasionally  of  murders,  and  demon- 
strations, and  arrests,  and  discoveries  of  nihilist  plots  on  the 
life  of  the  Czar  or  of  high  servants  of  the  Crown,  and  of 
alarming  discoveries  of  the  hold  the  movement  was  taking  in 
the  army.  But,  according  to  one  of  the  most  recent  writers 
on  the  subject,  the  author  of  "  Socialismus  und  Anarchismus, 
1883-1886,"  who  admits,  however,  that  it  is  very  difficult  to 
obtain  authentic  information  about  it  under  the  rigorous  system 
of  repression  at  present  practised  by  the  Russian  authorities,  a 
small  section  of  this  party,  whom  he  calls  the  followers  of 
Peter  Lavrofi",  have  been  developing  more  in  line  with  German 
Social  Democracy,  and  have  organized  themselves  into  a 
society  called  the  Labour  Emancipation  League,  which  pre- 


296  Contemporary  Socialism. 

fers  peaceful  means  of  agitation,  and  in  March,  1885,  published 
its  programme,  demanding  (1)  a  constitution,  (2)  the  nation- 
alization of  land,  (3)  the  handing  over  of  factories  to  the  pos- 
session of  societies  of  productive  labourers,  (4)  free  education, 
(5)  abolition  of  a  standing  army,  and  (6)  full  liberty  of  asso- 
ciation and  meeting.  The  same  writer  states,  however,  that 
this  socialist  group  are  not  numerous,  and  that  the  various 
robberies,  murders,  plots  against  the  Czar's  life,  incitements  of 
peasant  disturbances,  seizures  of  weapons  and  printing  presses 
that  keep  on  occurring,  show  that  the  nihilists,  as  the  others 
still  appear  to  be  called,  are  much  the  most  active  and  the  most 
important  section  of  the  revolutionary  party.  He  mentions 
also  that  in  1884  considerable  sensation  was  produced  by  the 
discovery  of  an  anarchist  secret  society  in  "Warsaw,  with 
several  magistrates  at  its  head,  which  aimed  at  creating  a 
revolution  in  Poland, — Prussian  and  Austrian  Poland,  as  well 
as  Russian, — and  rebuilding  the  Polish  nation  on  a  socialist 
basis.  On  the  apprehension  of  its  leaders  it  dissolved,  but 
sprang  to  life  again  almost  immediately  in  two  separate 
organizations — one  directly  allied  with  the  Russian  Terrorists, 
and  the  other,  under  the  influence  of  a  Jew  named  Men- 
delssohn, suppressing  its  Polish  nationalism  for  the  present, 
and  linking  itself  with  the  Russian  socialists — presumably  the 
followers  of  Lavroff  just  mentioned. 


CHAPTER   X. 

SOCIALISM   AND   THE   SOCIAL   QUESTION, 

The  renewal  of  the  socialist  agitation  has  not  been  unpro- 
ductive of  advantage,  for  it  has  led  to  a  general  recognition 
that  the  economic  position  of  the  people  is  far  from  satis- 
factory and  is  not  free  from  peril,  and  that  industrial  develop- 
ment, on  the  lines  on  which  it  has  hitherto  been  running, 
offers  much  less  prospect  than  was  at  one  time  believed  of 
effecting  any  substantial,  steady,  and  progressive  improvement 
in  their  condition.  It  is  only  too  manifest  that  the  immense 
increase  of  wealth  which  has  marked  the  present  century  has 
been  attended  with  surprisingly  little  amelioration  in  the 
general  lot  of  the  people,  and  it  is  in  no  way  remarkable  that 
this  fact  should  tend  to  dishearten  the  labouring  classes,  and 
fill  reflecting  minds  with  serious  concern.  Under  the  influence 
of  this  experience  economists  of  the  present  day  meet  social- 
ism in  a  very  different  way  from  Bastiat  and  the  economists  of 
1848.  They  entertain  no  longer  the  same  absolute  confidence 
in  the  purely  beneficent  character  of  the  operation  of  the 
principles  at  present  guiding  the  process  of  industrial  evolu- 
tion, or  in  the  sovereign  virtue  of  competition,  unassisted  and 
uncorrected,  as  an  agency  for  the  distribution  as  well  as  the 
production  of  wealth ;  and  they  no  longer  declare  that  there 
is  not  and  cannot  possibly  be  a  social  question.  On  the  con- 
trary, some  of  them  take  almost  as  unfavourable  a  view  of  the 
road  we  are  on  as  the  socialists  themselves.  Mr.  Caimes,  one 
of  the  very  ablest  of  them,  says :  "  The  fund  available  for 
those  who  live  by  labour  tends,  in  the  progress  of  society, 
while  growing  actually  larger,  to  become  a  constantly  smaller 
fraction  of  the  entire  national  wealth.  If,  then,  the  means  of 
any  one  class  of  society  are  to  be  permanently  limited  to  this 
fund,  it  is  evident,  assuming  that  the  progress  of  its  members 
keeps  pace  with  that  of  other  classes,  that  its  material  condi- 

297 


298  Contemporary  Socialisin, 

tion  in  relation  to  theirs  cannot  but  decline.  Now,  as  it  would 
be  futile  to  expect,  on  the  part  of  the  poorest  and  most 
ignorant  of  the  population,  self-denial  and  prudence  greater 
than  that  actually  practised  by  the  classes  above  them,  the 
circumstances  of  whose  life  are  so  much  more  favourable  than 
theirs  for  the  cultivation  of  these  virtues,  the  conclusion  to 
which  I  am  brought  is  this,  that  unequal  as  is  the  distribution 
of  wealth  already  in  this  country,  the  tendency  of  industrial 
progress — on  the  supposition  that  the  present  separation 
between  industrial  classes  is  maintained — is  towards  an  in- 
equality greater  still.  The  rich  will  be  growing  richer ;  and 
the  poor,  at  least  relatively,  poorer.  It  seems  to  me,  apart 
altogether  from  the  question  of  the  labourer's  interest,  that 
these  are  not  conditions  which  furnish  a  solid  basis  for  a  pro- 
gressive social  state  ;  but  having  regard  to  that  interest,  I 
think  the  considerations  adduced  show  that  the  first  and 
indispensable  step  towards  any  serious  amendment  of  the 
labourer's  lot  is  that  he  should  be,  in  one  way  or  other,  lifted 
out  of  the  groove  in  which  he  at  present  works,  and  placed  in 
a  position  compatible  with  his  becoming  a  sharer  in  equal  pro- 
portion with  others  in  the  general  advantages  arising  frcm 
industrial  progress."  ("Leading  Principles,"  p.  340.)  He 
thinks  it  beyond  question  that  tlje  condition  of  the  labouring 
population  is  not  so  linked  to  the  progress  of  industrial 
improvements  that  we  may  count  on  it  rising  pari  passu  with 
that  progress ;  because,  in  the  first  place,  the  labourer  can 
only  benefit  from  industrial  inventions  which  cheapen  com- 
modities that  enter  into  his  expenditure,  and  the  bulk  of  his 
expenditure  is  on  agricultural  products,  which  are  prevented 
from  being  cheapened  by  the  increase  of  population  always 
increasing  the  demand  for  them;  and,  second,  the  labourer  is 
practically  more  and  more  divorced  from  the  control  of  capital, 
and  reduced  to  the  position  of  a  recipient  of  wages,  and  there 
is  no  tendency  in  wages  to  grow  pari  passu  with  the  growth 
of  wealth,  because  the  demand  for  labour,  on  which,  in  the 
last  analysis,  the  rate  of  wages  depends,  is  always  in  an  in- 
creasing degree  supplied  by  inventions  which  dispense  with 
labour.  He  is  thus  debarred  from  participating  in  the  advan- 
tages of  industrial  progress  either  as  consumer  or  as  producer ; 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  299 

as  consumer,  by  over-population ;  as  producer,  by  his  divorce 
from  capital.  Mr.  Cairnes,  like  most  economists,  differs  from 
socialists  in  thinking  that  the  first  requisite  for  any  material 
improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  labouring  classes  lies  in 
effective  restraints  on  population,  but  he  says  that  "  even  a 
very  great  change  in  the  habits  of  the  labouring  classes  as 
bearing  upon  the  increase  of  population — a  change  far  greater 
than  there  seems  any  solid  ground  for  expecting — would  be 
ineffectual,  so  long  as  the  labourer  remains  a  mere  receiver  of 
wages,  to  accomplish  any  great  improvement  in  his  state  ;  any 
improvement  at  all  commensurate  with  what  has  taken  place 
and  may  be  expected  hereafter  to  take  place  in  the  lot  of 
those  who  derive  their  livelihood  from  the  profits  of  capital " 
(p.  335).  Here  he  is  entirely  at  one  with  socialists  in  believing 
that  the  only  surety  for  a  sound  industrial  progress  lies  in 
checking  the  further  growth  of  capitalism  b}-  the  encourage- 
ment of  co-operative  production,  which,  by  furnishing  the 
labouring  classes  with  a  share  in  the  one  fund  that  grows  with 
the  growth  of  wealth,  the  fund  of  capital,  offers  them  "  the 
sole  means  of  escape  from  a  harsh  and  hopeless  destiny  " 
(p.  338).  Mr.  Cairnes,  then,  agrees  with  the  socialists  in  declar- 
ing that  the  position  of  the  wage-labourer  is  becoming  less 
and  less  securely  linked  with  the  progressive  improvement  of 
society,  and  that  the  only  hope  of  the  labourer's  future  •  lies 
in  his  becoming  a  capitalist  by  virtue  of  co-operation ;  only, 
of  course,  he  is  completely  at  issue  with  them  in  regard  to  the 
means  by  which  this  change  is  to  be  effected,  believing  that 
its  introduction  by  the  direct  intervention  of  the  State  would 
be  unnecessary,  ineffectual,  and  pernicious. 

I  am  disposed  to  think  that  Mr.  Cairnes  takes  too  despondent 
a  view  of  the  possibilities  of  progress  that  are  comprised  in  the 
position  of  the  wage-labourer,  but  it  is  precisely  that  view  that 
has  lent  force  to  the  socialist  criticism  of  the  present  order  of 
things,  and  to  the  socialist  calls  for  a  radical  transformation 
by  State  agency.  The  main  charges  brought  by  socialists 
against  the  existing  economy  are  the  three  following,  all  of 
which,  they  allege,  are  consequences  of  the  capitalistic  manage- 
ment of  industry  and  unregulated  competition  : — 1st,  that  it 
tends  to  reduce  wages  to  the  minimum  required  to  give  the 


300  Contemporary  Socialism. 

labourer  his  daily  bread,  and  that  it  tends  to  prevent  them 
from  rising  above  that  minimum ;  2nd,  that  it  has  subjected 
the  labourer's  life  to  innumerable  vicissitudes,  made  trade 
insecure,  mutable  and  oscillatory,  and  created  relative  over- 
population; and,  3rd,  that  it  enables  and  even  forces  the 
capitalist  to  rob  the  labourer  of  the  whole  increase  of  value 
which  is  the  fruit  of  his  labour.  These  are  the  three  great 
heads  of  their  philippic  against  modern  society :  the  hopeless 
oppression  of  the  "  iron  and  cruel  law "  of  necessary  wages, 
the  mischief  of  incessant  crises  and  changes  and  of  the  chaotic 
regime  of  chance,  and  the  iniquity  of  capital  in  the  light  of 
their  doctrine  of  value.     Let  us  examine  them  in  their  order. 

I.  Socialists  found  their  first  charge  partly  on  their  inter- 
pretation of  the  actual  historical  tendency  of  things,  and  partly 
on  the  teaching  of  Ricardo  and  other  economists  on  natural 
wages.  Now,  to  begin  with  the  question  of  historical  fact,  the 
effect  which  has  been  produced  by  the  large  system  of  pro- 
duction on  the  distribution  of  wealth  and  the  general  condi- 
tion of  the  working  class  is  greatly  misconceived  by  them. 
So  far  as  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  concerned,  the  principal 
difference  that  has  occurred  may  be  described  as  the  decadence 
of  the  lower  middle  classes,  a  decline  both  in  the  number  of 
persons  in  proportion  to  population  who  enjoy  intermediate 
incomes,  and  also  in  the  relative  amount  of  the  average  income 
they  enjoy.  Their  individual  income  may  be  higher  than  that 
of  the  corresponding  class  150  or  200  years  ago,  but  it  bears 
a  less  ratio  to  the  average  income  of  the  nation.  The  reason 
of  this  decline  is,  of  course,  obvious.  The  yeomanry,  once  a 
seventh  of  our  population,  and  the  small  masters  in  trade  have 
gradually  given  way  before  the  economic  superiority  of  the 
large  capital  or  other  causes,  and  modern  industry  has  as  yet 
produced  no  other  class  that  can,  by  position  and  numbers, 
fill  their  room  ;  for  though,  no  doubt,  the  great  industries  call 
into  being  auxiliary  industries  of  various  kinds,  which  are  still 
best  managed  on  the  small  scale  by  independent  tradesmen, 
the  number  of  middling  incomes  which  the  greater  industries 
have  thus  contributed  to  create  has  been  far  short  of  the  num- 
ber they  have  extinguished.     The  same  causes  have,  of  course, 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  301 

exercised  very  important  effects  on  the  economic  condition  of 
the  working  class.  They  have  reduced  them  more  and  more 
to  the  permanent  position  of  wage-labourers,  and  have  left 
them  relatively  fewer  openings  than  they  once  possessed  for 
investing  their  savings  in  their  own  line,  and  fewer  oppor- 
tunities for  the  abler  and  more  intelligent  of  them  to  rise  to  a 
competency.  This  want  may  perhaps  be  ultimately  supplied 
under  existing  industrial  conditions  by  the  modem  system  of 
co-operation,  which  combines  some  of  the  advantages  of  the 
small  capital  with  some  of  the  advantages  of  the  large,  though 
it  lacks  one  of  the  chief  advantages  of  both,  the  energetic, 
uncontrolled  initiative  of  the  individual  capitalist.  But  at 
present,  at  any  rate,  it  is  premature  to  expect  this,  and  as 
things  stand,  many  of  the  old  pathways  that  linked  class  with 
class  are  now  closed  without  being  replaced  by  modern  sub- 
stitutes, and  working  men  are  more  purely  and  permanently 
wage-labourers  than  they  used  to  be.  But  while  the  wage- 
labourer  has  perhaps  less  chance  than  before  of  becoming  any- 
thing else,  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose,  as  is  sometimes  done, 
that  he  is  worse  off,  or  even,  as  is  perhaps  invariably  imagined, 
that  he  has  a  less  share  in  the  wealth  of  the  country  than  he 
had  when  the  wealth  of  the  country  was  less.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  position  of  the  wage-labourer  is  really  better  than  it 
has  been  for  three  hundred  years.  If  we  turn  to  the  period  of 
the  English  Revolution,  we  find  that  the  income  which  the 
labourer  and  his  family  together  were  able  to  earn  was  habi- 
tually insufficient  to  maintain  them  in  the  way  they  were 
accustomed  to  live.  Sir  M.  Hale,  in  his  "  Discourse  Touching 
the  Poor,"  pubHshed  in  1683,  says  the  family  of  a  working 
man,  consisting  of  husband,  wife,  and  four  children,  could  not 
be  supported  in  meat,  drink,  clothing,  and  house-rent  on  less 
than  IO5.  a  week,  and  that  he  might  possibly  be  able  to  make 
that  amount,  if  he  got  constant  employment,  and  if  two  of  his 
children,  as  well  as  their  mother,  could  earn  something  by 
their  labour  too.  Gregory  King  classifies  the  whole  labouring 
population  of  the  country  in  his  time,  except  a  few  thousand 
skilled  artisans,  among  the  classes  who  decrease  the  wealth  of 
the  country,  because,  not  earning  enough  to  keep  them,  they 
had  to  obtain  occasional  allowances  from  public  funds.     "We 


302  Contemporary  Socialism. 

do  well  to  grieve  over  the  pauperism  that  exists  now  in  Eng- 
land. A  few  years  ago,  one  person  in  every  twenty  received 
parochial  support,  and  one  in  thirty  does  so  yet.  These 
figures,  of  course,  refer  to  those  in  receipt  of  relief  at  one  time, 
and  not  to  all  who  received  relief  during  a  year.  But  for 
Scotland  we  have  statistics  of  both,  and  the  latter  come  as 
nearly  as  possible  to  twice  as  many  as  the  former.  If  the 
same  proportion  rules  in  England,  then  every  fifteenth  person 
receives  relief  in  the  course  of  the  year.*  But  in  King's  time, 
out  of  a  population  of  five  millions  and  a  half,  600,000  were  in 
receipt  of  alms,  i.e.^  more  than  one  in  ten ;  and  if  their  children 
under  16  years  of  age  were  included,  their  number  would 
amount  to  900,000,  or  one  in  six.  Now,  while  the  labourers' 
wages  were  then,  as  a  rule,  unequal  to  maintain  them  in  the 
way  they  lived,  we  know  that  their  scale  of  living  was  much 
below  that  which  is  common  among  their  class  to-day.  The 
only  thing  which  was  much  cheaper  then  than  now  was 
butcher  meat,  mutton  being  only  2c^.  a  lb.,  and  beef,  \\d. ;  but 
half  the  population  had  meat  only  twice  a  week,  and  a  fourth 
only  once.  The  labourer  lived  chiefly  on  bread  and  beer,  and 
bread  was  as  dear  as  it  is  now.  Potatoes  had  not  come  into 
general  use.  Butter  and  milk  were  cheaper  than  now,  but 
were  not  used  to  the  same  extent.  Fuel,  light,  and  clothing 
were  all  much  dearer,  and  salt  was  so  much  so  as  to  form  an 
appreciable  element  in  the  weekly  bill.  When  so  many  of  the 
staple  necessaries  of  life  were  high  in  price,  the  labourer's 
wages  naturally  could  not  afford  a  meat  diet.  Nothing  can 
furnish  a  more  decisive  proof  of  the  rise  in  the  real  remunera- 
tion of  the  wage-labourer  since  the  Revolution  than  the  fact 
that  the  wages  of  that  period  were  insufiRcient  to  maintain  the 
lower  standard  of  comfort  prevalent  then,  without  parochial 
aid,  while  the  wages  of  the  same  classes  to-day  are  generally 
able  to  maintain  their  higher  standard  of  comfort  without 
such  supplementary  assistance.  Then  the  hours  of  labour 
were,  on  the  whole,  longer ;  the  death  rate  in  London  was  1 
in  27,  in  place  of  1  in  40  now ;  and  all  those  general  advantages 

♦  The  proportion  in  England  for  1857,  according  to  official  figures,  was 
2>\  times  the  number  for  one  day,  but  whether  that  proportion  continues 
still  we  have  no  means  of  knowing. 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  303 

of  advancing  civilization,  which  are  the  heritage  of  all,  were 
either  absentor  much  inferior. 

These  facts  sufficiently  show  that  if  the  rich  have  got  richer 
since  the  Revolution,  the  poor  have  not  got  poorer,  and  that  the 
circumstances  of  the  labouring  class  have  substantially  im- 
proved with  the  growth  of  national  wealth.  As  far  as  their 
mere  money  income  is  concerned  there  is  some  reason  for  think- 
ing that  the  improvement  has  been  as  near  as  may  be  propor- 
tional with  the  increase  of  wealth.  The  general  impression  is 
the  reverse  of  this.  It  is  usual  to  hear  it  said  that  while  the 
labourers'  circumstances  have  undoubtedly  improved  absolutely, 
they  have  not  improved  relatively,  as  compared  with  the  pro- 
gress in  the  wealth  of  the  country  and  the  share  of  it  which 
other  classes  have  succeeded  in  obtaining.  But  this  impres- 
sion must  be  qualified,  if  not  entirely  rejected,  on  closer  exa- 
mination. Data  exist  by  which  it  can  be  to  some  extent  tested, 
and  these  data  show  that  while  considerable  alterations  have 
been  made  in  the  distribution  of  wealth  since  the  rise  of  the 
great  industries,  these  alterations  have  not  been  unfavourable 
to  the  labouring  classes,  but  that  the  proportion  of  the  wealth 
of  the  country  which  falls  to  the  working  man  to-day  is  very 
much  the  same — is  indeed  rather  better  than  worse — than  the 
proportion  which  fell  to  his  share  two  hundred  years  ago. 
Gregory  King  made  an  estimate  of  the  distribution  of  wealth 
among  the  various  classes  of  society  in  England  in  1688, 
founded  partly  on  the  poll-books,  hearth-books,  and  other  offi- 
cial statistical  records,  and  partly  on  personal  observation  and 
inquiry  in  the  several  towns  and  counties  of  England  ;  and  Dr. 
C.  Davenant,  who  says  he  had  carefully  examined  King's 
statistics  himself,  checking  them  by  calculations  of  his  own  and 
by  the  schemes  of  other  persons,  pronounces  them  to  be  "  very 
accurate  and  more  perhaps  to  be  relied  on  than  anything  that 
has  been  ever  done  of  a  like  kind."  Now,  a  comparison  of 
King's  figures  with  the  estimate  of  the  distribution  of  the 
national  income  made  by  Mr.  Dudley  Baxter  from  the  returns 
of  1867,  will  afford  some  sort  of  idea — though  of  course  only 
approximately,  and  perhaps  not  very  closely  so — of  the  changes 
that  have  actually  occurred.  King  takes  the  family  income  as 
the  unit  of  his  calculations.    Baxter,  on  the  other  hand,  specifies 


304  Contemporary  Socialism. 

all  bread-winners  separately — men,  women,  and  children ;  but 
to  furnisli  a  basis  of  comparison,  let  us  take  the  men  as  repre- 
senting a  family  each,  and  if  so,  that  would  give  us  4,006,260 
working-class  families  in  the  country  in  1867.  This  is  cer- 
tainly a  high  estimate  of  their  number,  because  in  1871  there 
were  only  five  million  of  families  in  England  ;  and  according 
to  the  calculations  of  Professor  Leone  Levi,  the  working  class 
comprises  no  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  population,  and 
would  consequently  consist  in  1871  of  no  more  than  3.300,000 
families.  If  we  were  to  take  this  figure  as  the  ground  of  our 
calculations,  the  result  would  be  still  more  striking  ;  but  let  us 
take  the  number  of  working-class  families  to  have  been  four 
millions  in  1867,  The  average  income  of  a  working-class 
family  in  King's  time  was  £12  12s.  (including  his  artisan  and 
handicraft  families  along  with  the  other  labourers) ;  the  average 
income  of  a  working  class  family  now  is  £81.  The  average 
income  of  English  families  generally  in  King's  time  was  £32 ; 
the  average  income  of  English  famiUes  generally  now  is  £162. 
The  average  income  of  the  country  has  thus  increased  five-fold, 
while  the  average  income  of  the  working  class  has  increased  six 
and  a  half  times.  The  ratio  of  the  working  class  income  to  the 
general  income  stood  in  King's  time  as  1 :  2^,  and  now  as  1 :  2. 
In  1688,  74  per  cent,  of  the  whole  population  belonged  to  the 
working  class,  and  they  earned  collectively  26  per  cent,  of  the 
entire  income  of  the  country  ;  in  1867 — according  to  the  basis 
we  have  adopted,  though  the  proportion  is  doubtless  really  less 
— 80  per  cent,  of  the  whole  population  belonged  to  the  working 
class,  and  they  earned  collectively  40  per  cent,  of  the  entire 
income  of  the  country.  Their  share  of  the  population  has 
increased  6  per  cent. ;  their  share  of  the  income  14  per  cent. 

Now,  I  am  far  from  adducing  these  considerations  with  the 
view  of  suggesting  that  the  present  condition  of  the  working 
classes  or  the  present  distribution  of  wealth  is  even  approxi- 
mately satisfactory,  but  I  think  they  ought  to  be  sufficient  to 
disperse  the  gloomy  apprehensions  which  trouble  many  minds 
as  if,  with  all  our  national  prosperity,  the  condition  of  the 
poorer  classes  were  growing  ever  worse  and  could  not  possibly, 
under  existing  industrial  conditions,  grow  any  better  ;  to  pre- 
vent us  from  prematurely  condemning  a  system  of  society, 


Socialism,  and  the  Social  Question,  305 

whose  possibilities  for  answering  the  legitimate  aspirations  of 
the  working  class  are  so  far  from  being  exhausted,  that  it  may 
rather  be  said  that  a  real  beginning  has  hardly  as  j^et  been 
made  to  accomplish  them ;  and  to  give  ground  for  the  hope 
that  the  existing  economy,  which  all  admit  to  be  a  most 
efficient  instrument  for  the  production  of  wealth,  may,  by  wise 
correction  and  management,  be  made  a  not  inadequate  agency 
for  its  distribution. 

The  socialists  are  not  more  fortunate  in  their  argument  from 
the  teaching  of  economists  than  in  their  account  of  the  actual 
facts  and  tendency  of  history.  The  "  iron  and  cruel  law  "  of 
necessary  wages  is,  as  expounded  by  economists,  neither  so 
iron  nor  so  cruel  as  Lassalle  represented  it  to  be.  They  taught 
that  the  price  of  labour,  like  the  price  of  everything  else, 
tended  to  settle  at  the  level  of  the  relative  cost  of  its  produc- 
tion, and  that  the  cost  of  its  production  meant  the  cost  of 
producing  the  subsistence  required  to  maintain  the  labourer  in 
working  vigour  and  to  rear  his  family  to  continue  the  work  of 
society  after  his  day ;  but  they  always  represented  this  as  a 
minimum  below  which  wages  would  not  permanently  settle, 
but  above  which  they  might  from  other  causes  remain  for  a 
continuity  considerably  elevated,  and  which,  even  as  a  mini- 
mum, was  in  an  essential  way  ruled  by  the  consent  of  the 
labouring  classes  themselves,  and  dependent  on  the  standard  of 
living  they  chose  habitually  to  adopt.  If  the  rate  of  wages 
were  forced  down  below  the  amount  necessary  to  maintain  that 
customary  standard  of  living,  the  marriage  rate  of  the  labour- 
ing classes  would  tend  to  fall  and  the  rate  of  mortality  to  rise 
till  the  supply  of  labour  diminished  sufficiently  to  restore  the 
rate  of  wages  to  its  old  level.  And  conversely,  if  the  price  of 
labour  rose  above  that  limit,  the  marriage  rate  among  the 
labouring  class  would  tend  to  rise  and  the  rate  of  mortality  to 
fall,  till  the  numbers  of  the  working  population  increased  to 
such  an  extent  as  to  bring  it  down  again.  But  the  rate  of 
marriage  depended  on  the  will  and  consent  of  the  labouring 
class,  and  their  consent  was  supposed  to  be  given  or  withheld 
according  as  they  themselves  considered  the  current  wages 
sufficient  or  insufficient  to  support  a  family  upon.  The  amount 
of  the  labourer's  "  necessary  "  subsistence  was  never  thought 

X 


3o6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

to  be  a  hard  and  fast  limit  inflexibly  fixed  by  physical  condi- 
tions. It  was  not  a  bare  living;  it  was  the  living  which  had 
become  customary  or  was  considered  necessary  by  the  labourer. 
Its  amount  might  be  permanently  raised,  if  in  consequence  of 
a  durable  rise  of  wages  a  higher  standard  of  comfort  came  to 
be  habitual  and  to  be  counted  essential,  and  the  addition  so 
made  to  it  would  then  become  as  real  an  element  of  natural 
or  necessary  wages  in  the  economic  sense  as  the  rest.  Its 
amount  might  also  permanently  fall,  if  the  labourers  ceased  to 
think  it  necessary  and  contentedly  accommodated  their  habits  to 
the  reduced  standard,  and  there  might  thus  ensue  a  permanent 
degradation  of  the  labourer,  such  as  took  place  in  Ireland  in 
the  present  century,  when  the  labouring  class  adjusted  them- 
selves to  reduction  after  reduction  till  their  lower  standard  of 
living  served,  in  the  first  place,  to  operate  as  an  inducement  to 
marriage  instead  of  a  check  on  it,  because  marriage  could  not 
make  things  worse,  and  at  least  lightened  the  burdens  of  life 
by  the  sympathy  that  shared  them' ;  and  served,  in  the  second 
place,  to  impair  the  industrial  efficiency  of  the  labourer  till  he 
was  hardly  worth  better  wages  if  he  could  have  got  them.  So 
far  then  was  the  doctrine  of  economists  from  involving  any 
"  iron  or  cruel "  limit  that  they  always  drew  from  it  the 
lesson  that  it  was  in  the  power  of  the  labouring  classes  to  elevate 
themselves  by  the  pleasant,  if  somewhat  paradoxical,  expedient 
of  first  enlarging  their  scale  of  expenditure.  "  Pitch  your 
standard  of  comfort  high,  and  your  income  will  look  after  itself," 
is  scarcely  an  unfair  description  of  the  rule  of  prudent  impru- 
dence thej'-  inculcated  on  working  people.  They  believed  that 
the  chief  danger  to  which  that  class  was  exposed  was  their 
own  excessive  and  too  rapid  multiplication,  and  they  considered 
the  best  protection  against  this  danger  to  lie  in  the  powerful 
preventive  of  a  high  scale  of  habitual  requirements. 

Moreover,  Ricardo  distinctly  maintamed  that  though  the 
natural  rate  of  wages  was  determined  as  he  had  explained,  yet 
the  operation  of  that  natural  law  might  be  practically  suspended 
in  a  progressive  community  for  an  indefinite  period,  and  that 
the  rate  of  wages  actually  given  might  even  keep  on  advancing 
the  whole  time,  because  capital  was  capable  of  increasing  much 
more  rapidly  than  population.     The  price  of  labour,  he  taugM, 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  307 

would  in  that  case  be  always  settled  by  the  demand  for  it 
which  was  created  by  the  accumulation  of  capital,  and  the  sole 
condition  of  the  accumulation  of  capital  was  the  productive 
power  of  labour.  The  rate  of  wages  in  a  progressive  community 
might  therefore  almost  never  be  in  actual  fact  determined  by . 
this  "iron  and  cruel  law"  at  all,  and  so  there  is  not  the  smallest 
ground  for  representing  economists  as  teaching  that  the 
present  system  compels  the  rate  of  wages  or  the  labourer's 
remuneration  to  hover  to  and  fro  over  the  margin  of  indigence. 

Lassalle,  then,  built  his  agitation  on  a  combination  of  errors. 
He  was  wrong  in  his  interpretation  of  the  tendency  of  actual 
historical  development ;  he  was  wrong  in  his  interpretation  of 
the  doctrine  of  economists  ;  and  now,  to  complete  the  confusion, 
that  doctrine  is  itself  wrong.  If  we  are  at  all  to  distinguish  a 
natural  or  normal  rate  of  wages  from  the  fluctuating  rates  of 
the  market,  that  natural  or  normal  rate  will  be  found  really  to 
depend,  not  on  the  cost  of  producing  subsistence,  but  on  the 
amount  or  rate  of  general  production,  or  the  amount  of  pro- 
duction per  capita  in  the  community,  or,  in  other  words,  on 
the  average  productivity  of  labour.  It  is  manifest  that  this 
would  be  so  in  a  primitive  condition  of  society  in  which 
industry  was  as  j-et  conducted  without  the  intervention  of  a 
special  employing  class,  for  then  the  wages  of  labour  would 
consist  of  its  product,  and  be,  in  fact,  as  Smith  says,  only 
another  name  for  it.  It  would  depend,  however,  not  exclu- 
sively on  the  individual  labourer's  own  efficiency,  but  also  on 
the  fertility  of  the  soil  and  the  general  efficiency  of  the  rest 
of  the  labouring  community.  "While  according  to  his  own 
efficiency  he  would  possess  a  greater  or  smaller  stock  of  articles, 
which,  after  providing  for  his  own  wants,  he  might  exchange 
for  other  articles  produced  by  his  neighbours ;  the  quantity  he 
would  get  in  exchange  for  them  would  be  great  or  small 
according  to  the  degree  of  his  neighbour's  efficiency.  The 
average  real  remuneration  of  labour,  or  the  average  rate  of 
wages,  in  such  a  community  would  therefore  correspond  with 
the  average  productivity  of  its  labour.  But  the  same  principle 
holds  good  in  the  more  comjle.i  organization  of  industrial  society 
that  now  exists,  though  its  operation  is  more  difficult  to  trace. 

The  price  of  labour  is  now  determined  by  a  struggle  between 


3o8  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  labourer  and  the  employer,  and  the  fortunes  of  the  struggle 
move  between  two  very  real,  if  not  very  definitely  marked, 
limits,  the  lower  of  which  is  constituted  by  the  smallest 
amount  which  the  labourer  can  afford  to  take,  and  the  higher 
by  the  largest  amount  which  the  employer  can  afford  to  give. 
The  former  is  determined  by  the  amount  necessary  to  support 
life,  and  the  latter  by  the  amount  necessary  to  secure  an  ade- 
quate profit.  Now  the  space  between  these  two  limits  will  be 
always  great  or  small  in  proportion  to  the  general  productivity 
of  labour  in  the  community.  The  general  productivity  of 
labour  acts  upon  the  rate  of  wages  in  two  ways,  immediately 
and  mediately.  Immediately,  because,  as  is  manifest,  efficient 
labour  is  worth  more  to  the  employer  than  inefficient;  and 
mediatelj'',  as  I  shall  presently  show,  because  it  conduces  to  a 
greater  diversion  of  wealth  for  productive  purposes,  and  so 
increases  the  general  demand  for  labour.  In  modern  society, 
as  in  primitive,  the  labourer  not  only  obtains  a  higher  re- 
muneration if  he  is  efficient  himself,  but  gathers  a  higher 
remuneration  from  the  efficiency  of  his  neighbours. 

This  will  be  obvious  at  once  to  any  one  who  reflects  on  the 
improved  remuneration  of  the  common  unskilled  labourers. 
The  man  who  works  with  pick  and  shovel  makes,  according  to 
Mr.  Mulhall's  estimate,  £30  a  year  now,  while  he  only  made 
£12  a  year  in  1800,  when  bread  was  about  twice  as  dear,  and 
yet  he  probably  did  quite  as  good  a  day's  work  then  as  he  does 
now,  except  so  far  as  his  better  wages  have  themselves  helped 
his  powers  of  labour,  through  affording  him  a  more  liberal  diet, 
and  in  that  case  the  same  question  is  raised.  How  did  he  come 
to  get  these  better  wages  ?  It  was  not  on  account  of  an  in- 
crease in  his  own  production,  for  that  was  the  effect,  not  the 
cause ;  it  was  on  account  of  the  general  increase  in  the  pro- 
ductivity of  all  labour  round  about  him.  The  great  improve- 
ment in  industrial  processes  have  brought  in  more  plentiful 
times,  and  he  shares  in  the  general  plenty,  though  he  ma}'^  not 
have  directly  contributed  to  its  production.  He  gets  more  for 
the  same  work,  not  merely  because  people  in  general,  with 
their  larger  surplus,  can  afford  to  give  him  more,  but  because, 
having  more  to  devote  to  industrial  investment,  they  increase 
the  demand  for  labour  till  they  are  obliged  to  give  him  more. 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  309 

The  proximate  demand  for  labour  is,  of  course,  capital,  but 
the  amount  of  capital  which  a  community  tends  to  possess — in 
other  words,  the  amount  of  wealth  it  tends  to  detach  for  in- 
dustrial investment — bears  a  constant  relation  to  the  amount 
of  its  general  production.  There  is  a  disposition  among  econo- 
mists to  speak  of  the  quantity  of  a  nation's  savings,  as  if  it  was 
something  given  and  complete  that  springs  up  independently 
of  industrial  conditions,  and  as  irrespectively  of  the  purpose  to 
which  it  is  to  be  applied  as  the  number  of  eggs  a  fowl  lays  or 
the  amount  of  fruit  a  tree  bears.  But,  in  reality,  it  is  not  so. 
The  amount  of  a  nation's  savings  is  no  affair  of  chance ;  it  is 
governed  much  more  by  commercial  reasons  than  is  sometimes 
supposed.  It  is  no  sufficient  account  of  the  matter  to  say  that 
men  save  because  they  have  a  disposition  to  save,  because  there 
is  a  strong  cumulative  propensity  in  the  national  character. 
They  save  because  they  think  to  get  a  profit  by  saving,  and 
the  point  at  which  the  nation  stops  saving  is  the  point  at 
which  this  expectation  ceases  to  be  gratified,  the  point  at 
which  enough  has  been  accumulated  to  occupy  the  entire 
field  of  profitable  investment  which  the  community  offers  at 
the  time.  Some  part  of  a  nation's  savings  will  alwaj-s  have 
originated  in  a  desire  to  provide  security  for  the  future,  but, 
as  this  part  is  less  subject  to  fluctuation,  it  exercises  less  in- 
fluence in  determining  the  extent  of  the  whole  than  the  more 
variable  part,  which  is  only  saved  when  there  is  sufficient  hope 
of  gain  from  investing  it.  There  may  be  said  to  be  a  natural 
amount  of  capital  in  a  country,  in  at  least  as  true  a  sense  as 
there  is  a  natural  price  of  labour,  or  a  natural  price  of  com- 
modities. Capital  has  its  bounds  in  the  general  industrial 
conditions  and  stature  of  the  conimunity,  but  it  moves  and 
answers  these  conditions  with  much  more  elasticity  than  the 
wage-fund  theory  used  to  acknowledge.  It  is,  as  Hermann 
said,  a  mere  medium  of  conveyance  between  consumer  and 
consumer,  and  has  its  size  decreed  for  it  by  the  quantities  it 
has  to  convey.  The  general  demand  for  commodities  is  a 
demand  for  capital.  It  creates  the  expectation  of  profit  which 
capital  is  diverted  from  expenditure  to  gratify,  and  since  it  is 
itself  in  another  aspect  the  general  supply  of  commodities,  it 
furnishes  the  possibilities  for  meeting  the  demand  for  capital 


3IO  Contemporary  Socialism. 

■whicli  it  creates.  This  whole  argument  may  seem  to  be 
reasoning  in  a  circle  or  wheeling  round  a  pivot,  and  so  in  a 
sense  it  may  be,  for  the  wheel  of  industry  is  circular.  The 
rate  of  wages  depends  on  the  demand  for  labour  ;  the  demand 
for  labour  depends  on  the  amount  of  capital ;  the  amount  of 
capital  depends  on  the  aggregate  production  of  and  demand  for 
commodities ;  and  the  amount  of  aggregate  production  depends 
on  the  average  productivity  of  labour.  It  is  but  a  more  cir- 
cuitous way  of  saying  the  same  thing  as  the  older  economists 
said,  when  they  declared  the  rate  of  wages  to  depend  on  the 
supply  of  capital,  as  compared  with  population  ;  but  it  shows 
that  the  supply  of  capital  is  a  more  elastic  element  than  they 
conceived,  that  it  adjusts  and  re-adjusts  itself  more  easily  and 
sensitively  to  industrial  conditions,  including  perhaps  even 
those  of  population,  and  that  it  is  governed  in  a  very  real  way 
by  the  great  primary  factor  that  determines  the  whole  size 
and  scale  of  the  industrial  system  in  all  its  parts,  the  general 
productivity  of  labour.  Taking  one  country  with  another,  the 
rate  of  wages  will  be  found  to  observe  a  certain  proportion  to 
the  amount  of  production  'per  capita  in  the  community. 

This  view  will  be  confirmed  by  a  comparison  of  the  actual 
rate  of  wages  prevalent  in  different  countries.  Lord  Brassey 
has  published  an  important  body  of  positive  evidence  tending 
to  show  that  the  cost  of  labour  is  the  same  all  over  the  world, 
that  for  the  same  wages  you  get  everywhere  the  same  work, 
and  that  the  higher  price  of  labour  in  some  countries  than 
in  others  is  simply  due  to  its  higher  efficiency.  Mr.  Cairnes, 
who  did  not  accept  this  conclusion  unconditionally,  had,  how- 
ever, himself  previously  estimated  that  a  day's  labour  in 
America  produced  as  much  as  a  day  and  a  third's  in  Great 
Britain,  to  a  day  and  a  half  s  in  Belgium,  a  day  and  three- 
fourths'  or  two  days'  in  France  and  Germany,  and  to  five 
daj's'  labour  in  India.  Now,  when  due  regard  is  had  for  the 
influence  of  special  historical  circumstances,  it  will  be  found 
that  the  rate  of  wages  observes  very  similar  proportions  in 
these  several  countries.  In  America  it  is  higher  than  the 
relative  productivity  of  the  country  would  explain,  because  a 
new  country  with  boundless  natural  resources  creates  a  per- 
manently exceptional  demand  for  labour ;  because  the  facihties 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  311 

with  ■which  land  can  be  acquired  and  wrought,  even  by  men 
without  previous  agricultural  training,  affords  a  ready  correc- 
tion to  temporary  redundancies  of  labour;  and  because  the 
labour  itself  is  more  mobile,  versatile,  and  energetic  in  a 
nation  largely  composed  of  immigrants.  Other  modifying  in- 
fluences also  interfere  to  preclude  the  possibility  of  a  precise 
correspondence  between  national  rates  of  wages  and  national 
amounts  of  production  jper  capita,  for  different  countries  vary 
much  in  the  extent  of  the  fixed  capital  they  employ  to  econo- 
mize personal  labour.  But  enough  has  been  said  to  show  that, 
if  a  natural  rate  of  wages  is  to  be  sought  at  all,  it  must  be 
looked  for,  not  in  the  cost  of  the  production  of  subsistence,  but 
in  the  rate  of  the  production  of  commodities ;  and  while  the 
standard  of  living  and  the  price  of  labour  tend  to  some  extent 
to  keep  one  another  up,  the  higher  standard  of  living  prevalent 
among  labourers  in  some  countries  is  a  consequence  much  more 
than  a  condition  of  the  higher  rate  of  wages,  which  the  higher 
productivity  of  labour  in  those  countries  occasions. 

There  is  therefore  no  ground  for  Lassalle's  representation 
that  the  law  of  necessary  wages  condemns  ninety-six  persons 
in  every  hundred  to  an  existence  of  hopeless  misery  to  enable 
the  other  four  to  ride  in  luxury.  The  principles  that  govern 
the  rate  of  wages  are  much  more  flexible  than  he  supposed, 
and  the  experience  of  trade  unions  has  sufficiently  demonstrated 
that  it  is  within  the  power  of  the  wage-labourers  themselves 
to  effect  by  combination  a  material  increase  in  the  price  of 
their  labour.  Trade  unions  have  taken  away  the  shadow  of 
despondency  that  lay  over  the  hired  labourer's  lot.  Their 
margin  of  effective  operation  is  strictly  limited ;  still  such  a 
margin  exists,  and  they  have  turned  it  to  account.  They 
have  put  the  labourer  in  a  position  to  hold  out  for  his  price ; 
they  have  converted  the  question  of  wages  from  the  question, 
how  little  the  labourer  can  afford  to  take,  into  the  question, 
how  much  the  employer  can  afford  to  give.  They  have  been 
able,  in  trades  not  subject'  to  foreign  competition,  to  effect  a 
permanent  rise  in  wages  at  the  expense  of  prices,  and  they  can 
probably,  in  all  trades,  succeed  in  keeping  the  rate  of  wages 
well  up  to  its  superior  limit,  viz.,  to  the  point  at  which,  while 
the  skilful  employers  might  still  afford  to  give  more,  the  uu- 


312  Contemporary  Socialism. 

skilful  could  not  do  so  without  ceasing  to  conduct  a  profitable 
business  and  being  driven  out  of  the  field  altogether.  For 
unskilful  management  tells  as  ill  on  wages  as  inefficient 
labour.  On  the  other  hand,  high  wages,  like  many  other 
difficult  conditions,  undoubtedly  tend  to  develop  skilful 
management.  The  employer  is  put  on  his  mettle,  and  all  his 
administrative  resource  is  called  into  action  and  keen  play. 
They  who,  like  socialists,  inveigh  against  this  modern  despot, 
ought  to  reflect  how  much  less  possible  it  would  have  been  for 
wages  to  have  risen,  if  industry  had  been  in  the  hands  of  hired 
managers  who  were  not  put  to  their  mettle,  because  they  had 
no  personal  stake  in  the  result.  It  must  not  be  forgotten, 
however,  that  while  trade  unions  are  able  to  keep  the  rate  of 
wages  up  to  its  superior  limit,  they  have  no  power  to  raise  that 
limit  itself.  This  can  only  be  done  by  an  increase  in  the 
general  productivity  of  labour,  and,  in  fact,  the  action  of  trade 
unions  could  not  have  been  so  effective  as  it  has  been,  unless 
the  high  production  of  the  country  afforded  them  the  condi- 
tions for  success.  And  since,  in  consequence  of  their  action 
and  vigilance,  the  rate  of  wages  in  the  trades  they  represent 
may  be  now  taken  as  usually  standing  close  to  its  superior 
limit,  the  chief  hope  of  any  further  substantial  improvement  in 
the  future  must  now  be  placed  in  the  possibility  of  raising  that 
limit  by  an  increased  productivity. 

Of  this  the  prospect  is  really  considerable  and  promising. 
Of  course  labourers  will  never  benefit  to  the  full  from  improve- 
ments in  the  productive  arts,  until  by  some  arrangement,  or 
by  many  arrangements,  they  are  made  sharers  in  industrial 
capital ;  but  they  will  benefit  from  these  improvements, 
though  in  less  measure,  even  as  pure  wage-labourers.  Their 
unions  will  be  on  the  watch  to  prevent  the  whole  advantage  of 
the  improvement  from  going  towards  a  reduction  of  the  price 
of  the  commodity  they  produce,  and  such  reduction  in  the 
price  of  the  commodity  as  actually  takes  place  will  enable  its 
consumers  to  spend  so  much  the  more  of  their  means  on  com- 
modities made  by  other  labourers,  and  to  that  extent  to  in- 
crease the  demand  for  the  labour  of  the  latter.  But  the  field 
from  which  I  expect  the  most  direct  and  extensive  harvest  to 
the  working  class  is  the  development  of  their  own  personal 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  313 

efficiency.  At  present  neither  employers  nor  labourers  seem 
fully  alive  to  tlie  resources  which  this  field  is  capable  of  yield- 
ing, if  it  were  wisely  and  fairly  cultivated.  Both  classes  are 
often  so  bent  on  immediate  advantage  that  they  lose  sight  of 
their  real  and  enduring  interest.  It  is  doubtful  whether  em- 
ployers are  more  slow  to  see  how  much  inadequate  remunera- 
tion and  uncomfortable  circumstances  impair  efficiency  and 
retard  production,  or  labourers  to  perceive  how  much  limiting 
the  general  rate  of  production  tends  to  reduce  the  general  rate 
of  wages.  In  labour  requiring  mainly  physical  strength,  con- 
tractors sufficiently  appreciate  the  fact  that  their  navvies  must 
be  well  fed  if  they  are  to  stand  to  their  work,  and  that  an 
extra  shilling  a  day  makes  a  material  difference  in  the  output. 
But  in  all  forms  of  skilled  labour,  likewise,  analogous  condi- 
tions prevail.  Just  as  slave-labour  is  inefficient  because  it  is 
reluctantly  given,  and  is  wanting  in  the  versatility  and  re- 
sourcefulness that  comes  from  general  intelligence,  so  is  free 
labour  less  efficient  or  more  efficient  in  exact  proportion  to  its 
fertility  of  resource  and  to  the  hopefulness  and  cheerfulness 
with  which  it  is  exerted ;  and  both  conditions  are  developed 
in  the  working  class  in  precise  ratio  with  their  general  com- 
fort. The  intelligent  workman  takes  less  time  to  learn  his 
trade,  needs  less  superintendence  at  his  work,  and  is  less 
wasteful  of  materials ;  and  the  cheerful  workman,  besides 
these  merits,  expends  more  energy  with  less  exhaustion.  But 
men  can  have  no  hope  in  their  work  while  they  live  purely 
from  hand  to  mouth,  and  you  cannot  spread  habits  of  intelli- 
gence among  the  labouring  class,  if  their  means  are  too  poor 
or  their  leisure  too  short  to  enable  them  to  participate  in  the 
culture  that  is  going  on  around  them. 

But  if  employers  are  apt  to  take  too  narrow  a  view  of  the 
worth  of  good  wages  as  a  positive  source  of  high  production, 
labourers  are  apt  to  take  equally  narrow  views  of  the  worth 
of  high  production  as  a  source  of  good  wages.  The  policy  of 
limiting  production  is  expressly  countenanced  by  a  few  of  their 
trade  unions,  with  the  concurrence,  I  fear,  of  a  considerable 
body  of  working-class  opinion.  This  is  shown  in  their  idea  of 
"  making  work,"  in  their' prohibition  of  "chasing" — ^.e.,  of  a 
workman  exceeding  a  given  average  standard  of  production — 


314  Contemporary  Socialism. 

and  in  their  prejudice  against  piecework.  Their  notion  of 
making  work  is  irrational.  They  think  they  can  make  work  by 
simply  not  doing  it,  by  spinning  it  out,  by  going  half  speed, 
under  the  impression  that  they  are  in  this  way  leaving  the 
more  over  to  constitute  a  demand  for  their  labour  to-morrow. 
And  so,  in  the  immediate  case  in  hand  and  for  the  particular 
time,  it  may  sometimes  be.  But  if  this  practice  were  to  be 
turned  into  a  law  universal  among  working  men,  if  all  labourers 
were  to  act  upon  it  everywhere,  then  the  general  production  of 
the  country  would  be  immediately  reduced,  and  the  general 
demand  for  labour,  and  the  rate  of  wages,  would  inevitably  fall 
in  a  corresponding  degree.  Instead  of  making  work,  they 
would  have  unmade  half  the  work  there  used  to  be,  and  have 
brought  their  whole  class  to  comparative  poverty  by  contract- 
ing the  ultimate  sources  from  which  wages  come.  The  true 
way  to  make  work  for  to-morrow  is  to  do  as  much  as  one  can 
to-day.  For  the  produce  of  one  man's  labour  is  the  demand 
for  the  produce  of  another  man's.  There  is  nothing  more  diffi- 
cult for  any  class  than  to  reach  an  enlightened  perception  of 
its  own  general  interest. 

The  objection  usually  made  to  "  chasing  "  and  piecework  is 
that  they  always  end  in  enabling  employers  to  extract  more 
work  out  of  the  men  without  giving  them  any  more  pay,  and 
that  they  conduce  to  overstraining.  Now  piecework,  without 
a  fixed  list  of  prices,  is  of  course  liable  to  the  abuse  which,  it  is 
alleged,  masters  have  made  of  it.  But  with  a  fixed  list  of  prices 
the  labourers  ought,  with  the  aid  of  their  unions,  to  be  as  able 
to  hold  their  own  against  the  encroachments  of  the  masters 
under  piecework  as  under  day  work,  and  piecework  is  so  de- 
cidedly advantageous,  both  to  masters  and  to  men,  that  it 
would  be  foolish  for  the  former  to  refuse  the  reasonable  conces- 
sion of  a  fixed  list  of  prices ;  and  it  would  be  equally  foolish  for 
the  latter  to  oppose  the  system  under  the  delusive  fear  of  a 
danger  which  it  is  amply  in  their  own  power  to  meet.  There 
is  a  good  deal  of  force  in  the  view  of  Mr.  William  Denny,  that 
piecework  will  prove  the  best  and  most  natural  transition  from 
the  present  system  to  a  r^Qime  of  co-operative  production, 
because  it  furnishes  many  kinds  of  actual  opportunities  for 
practising  co-operation ;  but  whatever  may  be  the  promise  of 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question. 


3^0 


piecework  for  the  age  that  is  to  come,  there  is  no  question  about 
its  promise  for  the  life  that  now  is.  Mr.  Denny,  speaking  from 
experience  in  his  own  extensive  shipbuilding  works  at  Dum- 
barton, says  that  "  a  workman  under  piecework  generally  in- 
creases his  output  in  the  long  run — partly  by  working  hard, 
but  principally  by  exercising  more  intelligence  and  arranging 
his  work  better — by  about  75  per  cent.,  while  the  total  amount 
of  his  wages  increases  by  about  50  per  cent.,  making  a  distinct 
saving  in  the  wages  portion  of  the  cost  of  a  given  article  of 
about  14  per  cent."  ("  The  Worth  of  Wages,"  p.  19.)  *  Similar 
testimony  is  given  by  Goltz,  Boehmert,  and  a  writer  in  Engels' 
Zeitschrift  for  1868,  as  to  the  effect  of  the  introduction  of  piece- 
work into  continental  industries,  and  Roscher  ascribes  much  of 
the  industrial  superiority  of  England  to  the  prevalence  of  piece- 
work here.  According  to  Mr.  Howell,  more  than  seventy  per 
cent,  of  the  work  of  this  country  is  done  at  present  by  the  piece, 
and  the  Trades'  Union  Commission  found  it  the  accepted  rule 
in  the  majority  of  the  industries  that  came  under  their  in- 
vestigation ;  in  fact,  in  all  except  engineering,  ironfounding, 
and  some  of  the  building  trades.     The  engineers  entertain  a 

*  Mr.  Denny  was  led  by  subsequent  experience  to  a  much  less  favour- 
able view  of  the  efficacy  of  piecework  as  an  instrument  of  working-class 
progress.  He  wrote  me  in  June,  1886  (ten  years  after  the  publication  of 
the  pamphlet  I  have  quoted  above)  an  interesting  and  valuable  letter  on  this 
subject,  which  is  published  in  full  in  Dr.  Bruce's  biography  of  him  ("Life 
of  William  Denny,"  p.  113).  A  larger  experience  of  piecework,  he  said,  had 
convinced  him  that,  excepting  in  cases  where  rates  can  be  fixed  and  made  a 
matter  of  agreement  between  the  whole  body  of  the  men  in  any  works  and 
their  employers,  piecework  prices  have  not  a  self-regulating  power,  and 
are  liable,  under  the  pressure  of  competition,  to  be  depressed  below  what 
he  would  consider  a  proper  level.  And  this  was  chiefly,  if  not,  indeed, 
exclusively,  the  case  with  those  lump  jobs  which  were  undertaken  by 
little  copartneries  of  workmen,  and  afforded  the  occasions  for  practising 
co-operation  from  which  he  had  drawn  the  hopes  I  have  mentioned  above. 
He  came  to  see  that  in  all  kinds  of  work  for  which  it  was  difficult  to  fix 
regular  rates,  the  beneficial  operation  of  payment  by  the  piece  on  wages  was 
much  more  uncertain  than  he  previously  supposed,  except  in  the  hands  of  a 
good  master,  who  was  not  an  absentee.  But  for  ordinary  work,  I  think  he 
still  adhered  to  his  favourable  opinion  of  the  effect  of  the  piece  system  in 
increasing  the  worker's  earnings.  He  said  he  had  nothing  to  modify  about 
the  figures  adduced  in  his  pamphlet,  and  I  understood  him  to  continue  to 
count  them  representative  of  the  general  operation  of  pieceworking. 


3i6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

strong  objection  to  it,  and  their  union  has  sometimes  expelled 
members  who  have  persisted  in  taking  it.  But  the  system 
works  smoothly  enough  when  an  established  price-list  has 
become  a  recognised  practice  of  the  trade.  The  objection  that 
the  piece  system  leads  to  careless,  scamped  and  inferior  work, 
can  hardly  be  considered  a  genuine  working-class  objection. 
That  is  the  look-out  of  the  masters,  and  they  find  it  easier  to 
check  quality  than  to  check  quantity.  Another  reason  some- 
times given  against  piecework  is  that  under  it  some  men  get 
more  than  their  share  in  the  common  stock  of  work,  but  there 
lurks  in  this  reason  the  same  fallacy  which  lies  in  the  notion  of 
"  making  work,"  the  fallacy  of  seeking  to  raise  the  level  of 
wages  by  limiting  production,  and  so  diminishing  the  common 
stock  of  work  of  society.  Labourers  seem  sometimes  to  harbour 
an  impression  as  if  they  were  losing  something  when  their 
neighbours  were  making  more  than  themselves.  Work  appears 
to  them — no  doubt  in  consequence  of  the  fluctuations  and  inter- 
mittent activity  of  modern  trade — to  come  in  bursts  and  wind- 
falls, nobody  knows  whence  or  how,  and  they  are  sometimes 
uneasy  to  see  the  harvest  being  apparently  disproportionately 
appropriated  by  more  active  and  e£B.cient  hands.  But  in  the 
end,  and  as  a  steady  general  rule,  they  are  gainers  and  not 
losers  by  the  efficiency  of  the  more  expert  workmen,  because 
productivity,  so  far  from  drying  up  the  sources  of  work,  is  the 
very  thing  that  sets  them  loose. 

A  more  important  objection  is  the  danger  of  overstraining, 
against  which  of  course  the  working  class  are  wise  to  exercise  a 
most  jealous  vigilance.  But,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  easy  to  ex- 
aggerate this  danger.  It  is  not  really  from  any  deepened  drain 
on  the  physical  powers  of  the  workmen,  so  much  as  from  a 
quickening  of  his  mental  life  in  his  work,  that  increase  in  his 
productivity  is  to  be  expected.  Mr.  Denny,  it  will  be  observed, 
attributes  the  additional  output  under  piecework  not  nearly  so 
much  to  harder  labour  as  to  the  exercise  of  more  intelligence 
and  to  a  better  arrangement  of  the  work.  But,  in  the  next 
place,  to  my  mind  the  great  advantage  of  piecework  is  that 
it  afibrds  a  sound  economic  reason  for  shortening  the  day  of 
labour.  The  work  being  intenser,  demands  a  shorter  day,  and 
being  more  productive,  justifies  it.    If  the  figures  I  have  quoted 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  317 

from  Mr.  Denny  are  at  all  representative,  then  a  labourer,  work- 
ing by  tbe  piece,  can  turn  out  40  per  cent,  more  in  eight  hours 
than  working  by  the  day  he  can  do  in  ten.  Differences  may  be 
expected  to  obtain  in  this  respect  in  different  trades  and  kinds  of 
work,  so  that  there  possibly  cannot  be  any  normal  day  of  labour 
for  all  trades  alike,  and  each  must  adjust  the  term  of  its  labour 
to  its  own  circumstances.  But  wherever  piecework  can  increase 
the  rate  of  production  to  the  extent  mentioned  by  Mr.  Denny, 
the  day  of  labour  may  be  shortened  with  advantage,  and  it  can 
apparently  do  so  in  the  very  trades  that  most  strongly  object  to  it. 
A  fact  mentioned  by  Mr.  Nasmyth,  in  his  remarkable  evidence 
before  the  Trades  Union  Commission,  opens  a  striking  view 
of  the  possibilities  of  increasing  production  through  develop- 
ing the  personal  efficiencj'-  of  the  labouring  class,  and  of  doing 
so  without  requiring  any  severe  strain.  "  When  I  have  been 
watching  men  in  my  own  work,"  he  says,  "  I  have  noticed  that 
at  least  two-thirds  of  their  time,  even  in  the  case  of  the  most 
careful  workmen,  is  spent,  not  in  work,  but  in  criticising  with 
the  square  or  straight-edge  what  they  have  been  working,  so 
as  to  say  whether  it  is  right  or  wrong."  And  he  adds — "  I  have 
observed  that  wherever  you  meet  with  a  dexterous  workman, 
you  will  find  that  he  is  a  man  that  need  not  apply  in  one  case 
in  ten  to  his  straight-edge  or  square."  And  why  are  not  all 
dexterous,  or,  at  least,  why  are  they  not  much  more  dexterous 
than  they  now  are  ?  Mr.  Nasmyth's  answer  is,  because  the 
faculty''  of  comparison  by  the  eye  is  undeveloped  in  them,  and 
he  contends  that  this  faculty  is  capable  of  being  educated  in 
every  one  to  a  very  much  higher  degree  than  exists  at  present, 
and  that  its  development  ought  to  be  made  a  primary  object  of 
direct  training  at  school.  "  If  you  get  a  boy,"  he  says,  "  to  be 
able  to  lay  a  pea  in  the  middle  of  two  other  peas,  and  in  a 
straight  line  with  these  two,  that  boy  is  a  vast  way  on  in  the 
arts."  He  has  gone  through  a  most  valuable  industrial  appren- 
ticeship before  he  has  entered  a  workshop  at  all.  If,  through 
training  the  ej^e,  workmen  can  save  two-thirds  of  their  time, 
it  is  manifest  that  there  is  abundant  scope  for  increasing  pro- 
ductivity and  shortening  the  day  of  labour  at  the  same  time. 
Industrial  efficiency  is  much  more  a  thing  of  mind  than  of 
muscle.     Jeder  Arheiter  ist  aiich  Kopfarheiter.     All  work  is  also 


3i8  Contemporary  Socialism. 

head  work.  Skill  is  but  a  primary  labour-saving  apparatus 
engrafted  by  mind  on  eye  and  limb,  and  it  is  in  developing  the 
mental  faculties  of  the  labourers  by  well-directed  training,  both 
general  and  technical,  that  the  chief  conditions  for  their  further 
improvement  lie.  Their  progress  in  intelligence  may  therefore 
be  expected  to  increase  their  productivity  so  as  to  justify  a 
shortening  of  their  day  of  labour,  and  the  leisure  so  acquired 
may  be  expected  to  be  used  so  as  to  increase  their  intelligence. 
Any  advance  men  really  make  in  the  scale  of  moral  and  mental 
being  tends  in  this  way  to  create  the  conditions  necessary  for 
its  maintenance. 

We  sometimes  hear  the  same  pessimist  prophecy  about 
shorter  hours  as  we  have  heard  for  centuries  about  better 
wages,  that  they  will  only  seduce  the  working  class  to  in- 
creased dissipation.  But  experience  is  against  this  view.  Of 
course  more  leisure  and  more  pay  are  merely  means  which  the 
labourer  may  according  to  his  habits  use  for  his  destruction  as 
easily  as  for  his  salvation.  But  the  increase  in  the  number  of 
apprehensions  for  drunkenness  that  frequently  accompanies  a 
rise  in  wages  proves  neither  one  thing  nor  another  as  to  the 
general  effect  of  the  rise  on  the  whole  class  of  labourers  who 
have  obtained  it;  it  proves  only  that  the  more  dissipated 
among  them  are  able  to  get  oftener  drunk.  Nor  can  the 
singular  manifestations  which  the  full  hand  sometimes  takes 
with  the  less  instructed  sections  of  the  working  class,  especially 
when  it  has  been  suddenly  acquired,  furnish  any  valid  infer- 
ence as  to  the  way  it  would  be  used  by  the  working  class  in 
general,  particularly  if  it  were  their  permanent  possession. 
The  evidence  laid  before  the  House  of  Lords  Committee  on 
Intemperance  shows  that  the  skilled  labourers  of  this  country 
are  becoming  less  drunken  as  their  wages  and  general  position 
are  improving  ;  and  Porter,  in  his  "  Progress  of  the  Nation," 
adduces  some  striking  cases  of  a  steady  rise  of  wages  making 
a  manifest  change  for  the  better  in  the  habits  of  unskilled 
labourers.  He  mentions,  on  the  authority  of  a  gentleman  who 
had  the  chief  direction  of  the  work,  that  "  the  formation  of  a 
canal  in  the  North  of  Ireland  for  some  time  afforded  steady 
employment  to  a  portion  of  the  peasantry,  who  before  that 
time  were  suffering  all  the  evils  so  common  in  that  country 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  319 

■which,  result  from  precariousness  of  employment.  Such  work 
as  they  could  previously  get  came  at  uncertain  intervals,  and 
was  sought  by  so  many  competitors  that  the  remuneration  was 
of  the  scantiest  amount.  In  this  condition  the  men  were  im- 
provident to  recklessness.  Their  wages,  insufficient  for  the 
comfortable  maintenance  of  their  families,  were  wasted  in  pro- 
curing for  themselves  a  temporary  forgetfulness  of  their  misery 
at  the  whisky  shop,  and  the  men  appeared  to  be  sunk  into  a 
state  of  hopeless  degradation.  From  the  moment,  however, 
that  work  was  offered  to  them  which  was  constant  in  its 
nature  and  certain  in  its  duration,  and  on  which  their  weekly 
earnings  would  be  sufficient  to  provide  for  their  comfortable 
support,  men  who  had  been  idle  and  dissolute  were  converted 
into  sober,  hardworking  labourers,  and  proved  themselves  kind 
and  careful  husbands  and  fathers ;  and  it  is  stated  as  a  fact 
that,  notwithstanding  the  distribution  of  several  hundred 
pounds  weekly  in  wages,  the  whole  of  which  would  be  con- 
sidered as  so  much  additional  money  placed  in  their  hands, 
the  consumption  of  whisky  was  absolutely  and  permanently 
diminished  in  the  district.  During  the  comparatively  short 
period  in  which  the  construction  of  this  canal  was  in  progress, 
some  of  the  most  careful  labourers — men  who  most  probably 
before  then  never  knew  what  it  was  to  possess  five  shillings  at 
any  one  time — saved  sufficient  money  to  enable  them  to  emi- 
grate to  Canada,  where  they  are  now  labouring  in  indepen- 
dence for  the  improvement  of  their  own  land  "  (p.  451).  It 
may  be  difficult  to  extirpate  drunkenness  in  our  climate  even 
with  good  wages,  but  it  is  certainly  impossible  with  bad,  for 
bad  wages  mean  insufficient  nourishment,  comfortless  house 
accommodation,  and  a  want  of  that  elasticity  after  work  which 
enables  men  to  find  pleasure  in  any  other  form  of  enjoyment. 
As  with  better  wages,  so  with  shorter  hours.  The  leisure 
gained  may  be  misused,  especially  at  first ;  but  it  is  neverthe- 
less a  necessary  lever  for  the  social  amelioration  of  the  labour- 
ing class,  and  it  will  more  and  more  serve  this  purpose  as  it 
becomes  one  of  their  permanent  acquisitions.  There  can  be  no 
question  that  long  hours  and  hard  work  are  powerful  predis- 
posing causes  to  drunkenness.  Studnitz  mentions  that  several 
manufacturers  in  America  had  informed  him  that  they  had 


320  Contempo7'ary  Socialism, 

invariably  remarked,  that  with  solitary  exceptions  here  and 
there,  the  men  who  wrought  for  the  longest  number  of  hours 
were  most  prone  to  dissipation,  and  that  the  others  were  more 
intelligent,  and  formed  on  the  whole  a  better  class.  Part  of 
the  prejudice  entertained  by  working  men  against  piecework 
comes  from  the  fact  that  it  is  very  often  accompanied  with 
overtime,  and  when  that  is  the  case,  it  generally  exerts  an 
unfavourable  effect  on  the  habits  of  the  workman.  Mr.  Apple- 
garth  said,  in  his  evidence  before  the  Trades  Union  Com- 
mission, that  nothing  degraded  the  labourer  like  piecework 
and  overtime.  Mr.  George  Potter  stated,  in  his  evidence 
before  the  Select  Committee  on  Masters  and  Operatives  in 
1860,  that  it  was  a  common  saying  among  working  people 
with  regard  to  a  man  who  works  hard  by  piecework  and  over- 
time, that  such  a  man  is  generally  a  drunkard.  He  ascribed 
much  of  the  intemperance  of  the  labouring  class  to  the  practice 
of  working  "  spells  " — i.e.,  heats  of  work  at  high  pressure  on 
the  piece  and  overtime  system — instead  of  steadily ;  and  he 
says — "  When  I  was  at  work  at  the  bench,  I  worked  to  a  firm 
where  there  was  much  overtime  and  piecework,  and  I  found 
that  the  men  at  piecework  were  men  who  generally  spent  five 
or  six  times  more  money  in  intoxicating  drink,  for  the  purpose 
of  keeping  up  their  physical  strength,  than  the  men  at  day 
work.  I  find,  on  close  observation,  that  the  men  working  at 
piecework  are  generally  a  worse  class  of  men  in  every  way, 
both  in  intelligence  and  education,  and  in  pecuniary  matters." 
Now,  the  ill  effects  which  issue  from  piecework  combined  with 
overtime  could  not  accrue  from  piecework  combined  with 
shorter  hours.  Besides,  in  a  case  of  this  kind  it  is  sometimes 
difficult  to  say  which  is  cause  and  which  effect,  or  how  much 
the  one  acts  and  reacts  on  the  other.  For  both  Mr.  Potter  and 
the  manufacturers  mentioned  by  Studnitz  represent  the  men 
who  wrought  longest  as  being  not  only  more  drunken,  but  less 
intelligent  and  educated,  and,  in  fact,  as  being  every  way  in- 
ferior ;  and  we  can  easily  understand  how  men  of  unsteady 
habits  should  prefer  to  work  "  spells,"  and  try  to  make  up  by 
excessive  work  three  days  in  the  week,  for  excessive  drinking 
the  other  three. 

Dissipation  and  overtime  generally  go  together,  but  neither 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  321 

of  them  is  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  piecework.  The 
best  check  to  both  is  probably  the  spread  of  general  education 
among  the  working  class,  for  the  better  educated  workmen  are 
even  at  present  usually  found  against  them ;  and  the  spread  of 
general  education — I  do  not  speak  here  of  technical — among 
the  working  class  is  more  fruitful  than  even  piecework  itself 
in  opening  up  fresh  reserves  of  industrial  efficiency  in  our 
labouring  manhood.  Roscher  has  pointed  out  how  a  stimulant 
like  piecework  produces  in  a  fairly  well-educated  district  twice 
the  result  it  produces  in  a  comparatively  illiterate  one.  Taking 
the  figures  of  Goltz  on  rural  labour  in  different  German  States, 
he  shows  that  while  the  earnings  of  pieceworkers  were  only 
11  per  cent,  higher  than  the  earnings  of  day-workers  in  Osna- 
bruck,  they  were  as  much  as  23  per  cent,  higher  in  Hesse. 
Mr.  Peshine  Smith  mentions  that  the  Board  of  Education  in 
Massachusetts  procured  from  overseers  of  factories  in  that 
State  a  ret:;\m  of  the  different  amounts  of  wages  paid  and  the 
degree  of  education  of  those  who  received  them.  Most  of  the 
work  was  done  by  the  piece,  and  it  was  found  that  the  wages 
earned  rose  in  exact  ratio  with  the  degree  of  education,  from 
the  foreigners  at  the  bottom  who  made  their  mark  as  the 
signature  of  their  weekly  receipts  to  the  girls  at  the  top  who 
did  school  in  winter  and  worked  in  factories  in  summer.  In 
some  branches  of  industry  many  new  improvements  remain 
unused  because  the  workpeople  are  too  ignorant  to  work  them 
properly.  Moreover,  for  the  supreme  quality  of  resourceful- 
ness, education  is  like  hands  and  feet,  and  if  we  may  judge 
from  the  number  of  useful  labour-saving  inventions  which 
working  men  give  us  even  now,  we  cannot  set  limits  to  the 
number  they  will  give  when  the  whole  labouring  class  will 
have  got  the  use  of  their  mind  by  an  adequate  measure  of 
general  education,  and  when,  as  we  may  hope,  they  will  have 
got  leisure  to  use  it  in  through  a  shortening  of  the  day  of 
labour.  The  possibihties  of  this  last  source  are  very  well 
illustrated  by  an  experiment  of  Messrs.  Denny.  In  1880  they 
established  in  their  ship-building  yard  at  Dumbarton  an 
award  scheme  for  recompensing  inventions  made  by  their 
workmen  for  improving  existing  machinery  or  applying  it  to 
a  new  class  of  work,  or  introducing  new  machinery  in  place  of 

Y 


322  Contemporary  Socialism. 

hand  labour,  or  discovering  any  new  method  of  arranging  or 
securing  work  that  either  improved  its  quality  or  economized 
its  cost.  Mr.  "William  Denny  stated,  after  the  scheme  had 
been  nearly  seven  years  in  operation,  that  in  that  time  as  many 
as  196  awards  had  been  given  for  inventions  which  were 
thought  useful  to  adopt,  that  three  times  that  number  had 
been  submitted  for  consideration,  and  that  besides  being 
beneficial  in  causing  so  many  useful  improvements  to  be 
made,  the  scheme  had  the  effect  of  making  the  workmen  of 
all  departments  into  active  thinking  and  planning  beings 
instead  of  mere  flesh  and  blood  machines. 

I  cannot,  therefore,  take  so  dark  a  view  as  is  sometimes 
entertained  of  the  futurity  of  the  wage-labourer,  even  if  he 
were  compelled  to  remain  purely  and  permanently  such.  His 
position  has  substantially  improved  in  the  past,  and  contains 
considerable  capabihties  for  continued  improvement  in  the 
future.  Of  course  the  action  of  trade  unions,  be^des  being 
confined  to  the  limits  I  have  described,  is  subject  to  the 
further  restriction,  that  it  can  only  avail  for  the  labourers  who 
belong  to  them,  and  is  indeed  founded  on  the  exclusion  or 
diminution  of  the  competition  of  others.  They  impose  limita- 
tions on  the  number  of  apprentices,  and  prescribe  a  certain 
standard  of  efficiency,  loosely  ascertained,  as  a  condition  of 
membership.  There  can  be  no  manner  of  objection  to  the 
latter  measure,  nor  does  the  former,  though  it  is  manifestly 
liable  to  abuse  and  is  sometimes  vexatious  in  its  operation, 
seem  to  be  practically  worked  so  as  to  diminish  the  labour  in 
any  particular  industry  beneath  the  due  requirements  of  trade, 
or  to  create  an  unhealthy  monopoly.  Then,  though  the  trade 
unionists  gather  their  gains  by  keeping  off  the  competition  of 
others,  it  cannot  be  said  that  these  others  are  necessarily  in 
any  worse  position  than  they  would  have  occupied  if  trade 
unions  had  never  come  into  existence.  It  may  even  be  that 
through  the  operation  of  custom,  which  will  always  have  an 
influence  in  settling  the  price  of  labour,  a  certain  benefit  may 
be  reflected  upon  them  from  a  rise  in  the  usual  price  effected 
by  trade  union  agency.  But  in  any  case,  it  is  no  sound  objec- 
tion to  an  agency  of  social  amelioration  that  its  efficiency  is 
only  partial,  for  it  is  not  so  much  to  any  single  panacea,  as  to 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  323 

the  application  of  a  multitude  of  partial  remedies,  that  we  can 
most  wisely  tnist  for  the  accomplishment  of  our  great  aim. 

II.  The  second  main  count  in  the  socialist  indictment  of  the 
present  industrial  sj'stem  is  that  it  has  multiplied  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  trade,  and  so  imposed  an  incurable  and  distressing 
insecurity  upon  the  labourer's  lot.  The  rapidity  of  technical 
transformation  and  the  frequency  of  commercial  crises  create, 
it  is  alleged,  a  perpetual  over-population,  driving  ever-increas- 
ing proportions  of  the  labourers  out  of  active  employment  into 
what  Marx  calls  the  industrial  reserve,  the  hungry  battalions 
of  the  half-employed  or  the  altogether  unemployed.  In  regard 
to  techni'cal  transformation,  the  effects  of  machinery  on  the 
working  class  are  now  tolerably  well  understood.  Individuals 
suffer  in  the  first  instance,  but  the  class,  as  a  whole,  is  eventu- 
ally a  great  gainer.  Machinery  has  always  been  the  means  of 
employing  far  more  hands  than  it  superseded,  when  it  did 
supersede  any  (for  it  has  by  no  means  invariably  done  so). 
There  is  no  way  of  "  making  work "  like  producing  wealth. 
The  increased  production  due  to  machinery  cheapens  the 
particular  commodities  produced  by  it,  and  thus  enables  the 
purchasers  of  these  commodities  to  spend  more  of  their  income 
on  other  things,  and  so  practically  to  make  work  for  other 
labourers.  But  even  in  the  trades  into  which  the  machinery 
has  been  imported,  the  effect  of  its  introduction  has  been  to 
multiply,  instead  of  curtailing,  employment.  Take  the  textile 
trades — much  the  most  important  of  the  machine  industries. 
Mr,  Mulhall,  in  his  "Dictionary  of  Statistics"  (p.  838),  gives 
the  following  statistics  of  the  textile  operatives  in  the  United 
Kingdom  at  various  dates  : — 


Year. 

Men. 

Women. 

Children. 

Total. 

1835  .     . 

.    .      82,000 

167,000 

104,000 

353,000 

1850  .     . 

.    .     158.000 

329,000 

109,000 

596,000 

18S0  .     . 

.     .     232,000 

543,000 

201,000 

976,000 

Marx  and  others  dwell  much  on  the  fact,  that  machinery  leads 
frequently  to  the  substitution  of  female  for  male  labour ;  but 
the  preceding  table  shows  that  while  female  labour  has  been 


324  Contemporary  Socialism. 

largely  multiplied,  male  labour  has  been  scarcely  less  so,  and 
besides,  a  more  extensive  engagement  of  women  is  in  itself  no 
public  disadvantage.  For  half  the  question  of  our  pauperism 
is  really  the  question  of  employment  for  women,  it  being  so 
much  more  difficult  to  find  work  for  unemployed  women  than 
for  unemployed  men  ;  and  if  the  course  of  industrial  transfor- 
mation opens  up  new  occupations  that  are  suitable  for  them,  it 
is  so  far  entirely  a  social  gain,  and  no  loss.  No  doubt,  though 
the  good  accruing  from  industrial  transformation  far  out- 
weighs the  evil,  yet  evil  does  accrue  from  it,  and  evil  of  the 
kind  alleged,  the  tendency  to  develop  local  or  temporary  re- 
dundancies of  labour.  But  then  that  is  an  evil  with  which  we 
have  never  yet  tried  to  cope,  and  it  may  probably  be  dealt  with 
as  effectively  on  the  present  system  as  on  any  other.  Socialism 
would  stop  it  by  stopping  the  progress  which  it  happens  to 
accompany,  and  would  therefore  envelop  society  in  much  more 
serious  distress  than  it  sought  to  remove.  In  Marx's  remark- 
able survey  of  English  industrial  history  almost  every  conquest 
of  modern  civilization  is  viewed  with  regret ;  but  it  is  mani- 
festly idle  to  think  of  forcing  society  back  now  to  a  state  in 
which  there  should  be  no  producing  for  profit,  but  only  for 
private  use,  no  subdivision  of  labour,  no  machinery,  no  steam, 
for  these  are  the  very  means  without  which  it  would  be  im- 
possible for  our  vastly  increased  population  to  exist  at  all. 
What  may  be  done  to  meet  the  redundancies  of  labour  that 
are  always  with  us  is  a  difficult  but  pressing  question  which 
I  cannot  enter  upon  here.  State  provision  of  work — even  in 
producing  commodities  which  are  imported  from  abroad,  and 
which  might  therefore  be  produced  in  State  workshops  without 
hurting  home  producers — has  many  drawbacks,  but  the  prob- 
lem is  one  that  ought  to  be  faced,  and  something  more  must 
be  provided  for  the  case  than  workhouse  and  prison. 

In  regard  to  commercial  crises,  they  are  rather  lessening  than 
increasing.  They  may  be  more  numerous,  for  trade  is  more 
extensive  and  ramified,  but  they  are  manifestly  less  violent 
than  they  used  to  be.  The  commercial  and  financial  crises  of 
the  present  century  have  been  moderate  in  their  effects  as  com- 
pared with  the  Darien  scheme,  Law's  speculations  in  France, 
or  the   Tulip   mania   in   the  Low   Countries,  and  under  the 


Socialis77t  and  the  Social  Question.  325 

influence  of  the  beneficial  expansion  of  international  commerce 
and  the  equally  beneficial  principle  of  free  trade,  we  enjoy 
now  an  absolute  immunity  from  the  great  periodical  visitation 
of  famine  which  was  so  terrible  a  scourge  to  our  ancestors. 
Facts  like  these  are  particularly  reassuring  for  this  reason,  that 
they  are  the  result,  partly  of  better  acquaintance  with  the 
principles  of  sound  commercial  and  financial  success,  and  partly 
of  the  equalizing  effect  of  international  ramifications  of  trade, 
and  that  these  are  causes  from  which  even  greater  things  may 
be  expected  in  the  future,  because  they  are  themselves  progres- 
sive. There  is  no  social  system  that  can  absolutely  abolish 
vicissitudes,  because  many  of  them  depend  on  causes  over 
which  man  has  no  possible  control,  such  as  the  harvests  of  the 
world,  and  others  on  causes  over  which  no  single  society  of 
men  has  any  control,  such  as  wars ;  and,  besides,  it  is  possible 
to  do  a  great  deal  more  under  the  existing  system  than  is  at 
present  done,  to  mitigate  and  neutralize  some  of  their  worst 
effects.  To  provide  the  labouring  population  with  the  security 
of  existence,  which  is  one  of  their  pressing  needs,  a  sound 
system  of  working  class  insurance  must  be  devised,  which  shall 
indemnify  them  against  all  the  accidents  and  reverses  of  life, 
including  temporary  loss  of  work  as  well  as  sickness  and  age, 
and  it  is  not  too  much  to  hope,  from  the  amount  of  attention 
which  the  subject  is  at  present  attracting,  that  such  a  system 
will  be  obtained.  As  far  as  yet  appears,  the  scheme  proposed 
by  Professor  Lujo  Brentano,  to  which  I  have  already  referred, 
is,  on  the  whole,  the  soundest  and  most  satisfactory  in  its 
general  principles  that  has  been  advanced. 

Again,  much  of  the  instability  of  trade  arises  from  the  want 
of  commercial  statistics,  and  the  consequent  ignorance  and 
darkness  in  which  it  must  be  conducted.  More  light  would 
lessen  at  once  the  mistakes  of  well-meaning  manufacturers  and 
the  opportunities  of  illegitimate  and  designing  speculation. 
Socialists  count  all  speculation  illegitimate,  because  they  fail 
to  see  that  speculation,  conducted  in  good  faith,  exercises  a 
moderating  influence  upon  the  oscillations  of  prices,  preventing 
them  from  falling  so  low,  or  rising  so  high,  as  they  would 
otherwise  do.  Speculation  has  thus  a  legitimate  and  beneficial 
work  to  perform  in  the  industrial  system,  and  if  it  performed 


326  Contemporary  Socialism. 

its  work  rightly,  it  ought  to  have  the  opposite  effect  from  that 
ascribed  to  it  by  socialists,  and  to  conduce  to  the  stability  of 
trade,  instead  of  shaking  it.  But  unhappily  an  unscrupulous 
and  fraudulent  spirit  too  often  presides  over  this  work. 
Schaeffle,  who  is  not  only  an  eminent  political  economist, 
but  has  been  Minister  of  Commerce  to  one  of  the  great  powers 
of  Europe,  says  that  when  he  got  acquainted  with  the  bourse, 
he  gave  up  believing  any  longer  in  the  economic  harmonies, 
and  declared  theft  to  be  the  principle  of  modern  European 
commerce.  Socialists  always  take  the  bourse  to  be  the  type  of 
capitalistic  society,  and  the  fraudulent  speculator  to  be  the  type 
of  the  bourse,  and  however  they  may  err  in  this,  there  is  one 
point  at  any  rate  which  it  is  almost  impossible  for  them  to 
exaggerate,  and  that  is  the  mischief  accruing  to  the  whole  com- 
munity— and,  as  is  usual  with  all  general  evils,  to  the  working 
class  more  than  any  other — from  the  prevalence  of  nnsound 
trading  and  inflated  speculation.  Confidence  is  the  very  quick 
of  modem  trade.  The  least  vibration  of  distrust  paralyzes 
some  of  its  movements  and  depresses  its  circulation.  Enter- 
prise in  opening  new  investments  is  indeed  more  and  more 
indispensable  to  the  vitality  of  modem  industry,  but  the 
mischiefs  of  misdirected  enterprise  are  as  great  as  the  benefits 
of  well-directed.  Illegitimate  speculation  is  very  difficult  to 
deal  with.  It  can  never  be  reached  by  a  public  opinion  which 
worships  success  and  bows  to  wealth  with  questionless  devo- 
tion. Nor  is  it  practicable  for  the  State  to  put  it  down  by 
direct  measures.  But  the  State  may  perhaps  mitigate  it  some- 
what by  helping  to  procure  a  good  system  of  commercial 
statistics,  for  unsound  speculation  thrives  in  ignorance,  and 
may  be  to  some  extent  prevented  by  better  knowledge.  The 
socialist  demand  for  commercial  statistics  is  therefore  to  be 
approved.  They  would  benefit  everybody  but  the  dishonest 
dealer.  They  would  not  only  be  a  corrective  against  unsound 
speculation,  but  they  would  tend  to  smooth  the  conflicts  be- 
tween capital  and  labour  about  the  rate  of  wages,  and  the 
working  class  in  America  press  the  demand  on  the  ground 
of  their  experience  of  the  benefits  they  have  already  derived 
from  the  Labour  Statistical  Bureaux  established  in  certain  of 
the  States  there.      Some  of  our  own   most  weighty  economic 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  327 

autliorities  are  strongly  in  favour  of  a  measure  of  this  kind. 
Mr.  Jevons,  for  example,  says :  "  So  essential  is  a  knowledge  of 
the  real  state  of  supply  and  demand  to  the  smooth  procedure  of 
trade,  and  the  real  good  of  the  community,  that  I  conceive  it 
would  be  quite  legitimate  to  compel  the  publication  of  requisite 
statistics.  Secrecy  can  only  conduce  to  the  profit  of  speculators 
who  gain  from  great  fluctuations  of  prices.  Speculation  is 
advantageous  to  the  public  only  so  far  as  it  tends  to  equalize 
prices,  and  it  is  therefore  against  the  public  good  to  allow 
speculators  to  foster  artificially  the  inequalities  of  prices  by 
which  they  profit.  The  welfare  of  millions,  both  of  consumers 
and  producers,  depends  on  an  accurate  knowledge  of  the  stocks 
of  cattle  and  corn,  and  it  would  therefore  be  no  unwarrantable 
interference  with  the  Hberty  of  the  subject  to  require  any 
information  as  to  the  stock  in  hand.  In  Billingsgate  fish- 
market  it  has  been  a  regulation  that  salesmen  shall  fix  up  in 
a  conspicuous  place  every  morning  a  statement  of  the  kind 
and  amount  of  their  stock ;  and  such  a  regulation,  whenever 
it  could  be  enforced  on  other  markets,  would  always  be  to  the 
advantage  of  every  one  except  a  few  traders."  ("  Theory  of 
Political  Economy,"  p.  88.) 

III.  The  next  principal  charge  brought  by  socialists  against 
the  present  order  of  things  is  that  it  commits  a  signal  injustice 
against  the  labouring  class,  by  suffering  the  capitalists  who 
employ  them  to  appropriate  the  whole  increase  of  value  which 
results  from  the  process  of  production,  and  which,  as  is  alleged, 
is  contributed  entirely  by  the  labour  of  the  artizans  engaged 
in  the  process.  I  have  already  exposed  the  fallacy  of  the 
theory  of  value  on  which  this  claim  is  founded,  and  I  need  not 
repeat  here  what  for  convenience  sake  has  been  stated  in 
another  place.  (See  chap.  iii.  pp.  160-6).  Value  is  not  con- 
stituted by  time  of  labour  alone,  except  in  the  case  of  commo- 
dities admitting  of  indefinite  multiphcation ;  it  is  constituted 
in  all  other  cases  by  social  utility ;  and  the  importance  of  this 
distinction  is  especially  manifest  in  treating  of  the  very  point 
that  comes  before  us  here — the  value  of  labour.  "Why  is  one 
kind  of  labour  paid  dearer  than  another  ?  Why  is  an  organizer 
of  manual  labour  better  paid  than  the  manual  labourer  himself? 


o 


28  Contemporary  Socialism. 


Why  is  the  railway  chairman  better  paid  than  the  railway 
porter  ?  Or  why  has  the  judge  a  better  salary  than  the  police- 
man? Is  it  because  he  exerts  more  labour,  more  socially 
necessary  time  of  labour  ?  No  ;  the  porter  works  as  long  as 
the  chairman,  and  the  policeman  as  long  as  the  judge.  Is  it 
because  more  time  of  labour  has  been  expended  in  the  pre- 
paration and  apprenticeship  of  the  higher  paid  functionaries  ? 
No;  because  the  railway  chairman  may  have  undergone  no 
special  training  that  thousands  of  persons  with  much  poorer 
incomes  have  not  also  undergone,  and  the  education  of 
the  judge  cost  no  more  than  the  education  of  other  barris- 
ters who  do  not  earn  a  twentieth  part  of  his  salary.  The 
explanation  of  differences  of  remuneration  like  these  is  not 
to  be  found  in  different  quantities  of  labour,  but  in  different 
qualities  of  labour.  One  man's  work  is  higher,  rarer,  more 
excellent,  possesses,  in  short,  more  social  utility  than  another's, 
and  for  that  reason  is  more  valuable,  as  value  is  at  present 
constituted.  It  is  thus  manifest  that  the  theory  which  declares 
value  to  be  nothing  but  quantity  of  labour,  nothing  but  time  of 
labour,  is  inconsistent  with  some  of  the  most  obvious  and  im- 
portant phenomena  of  the  value  of  different  kinds  of  labour. 
Many  forms  of  labour  are  much  more  remunerative  than 
others,  nay,  much  more  remunerative  than  many  applications 
of  capital,  and  the  difference  of  remuneration  is  in  no  way 
whatever  connected  with  the  quantity  of  labour  or  the  time  of 
labour  undergone  in  earning  it.  Socialists  may  perhaps  answer 
that  this  ought  not  to  be  so  ;  that  if  things  were  as  they  should 
be,  the  railway  chairman,  the  station-master,  the  inspector,  the 
guard,  and  the  porter  would  be  paid  by  the  same  simple 
standard  of  the  duration  of  their  labour  in  the  service  of  the 
line — a  standard  which  would  probably  reverse  the  present 
gradation  of  their  respective  salaries  ;  but  if  they  make  that 
answer,  they  change  their  ground ;  they  no  longer  base  their 
claim  for  justice  to  the  labourer  on  value  as  it  is  constituted^ 
but  on  value  as  they  think  it  oiight  to  he  constituted.  Their 
theory  of  value  would  in  that  case  not  be  what  it  pretends  to 
be,  a  scientific  theory  of  the  actual  constitution  of  value,  but  a 
Utopian  theory  of  its  proper  and  just  constitution.  It  would 
be  tantamount  to  saying,  Every  man,  according  to  our  ideas  of 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Qnestion.  329 

of  justice,  ought  to  be  paid  according  to  the  value  of  his  work, 
and  the  value  of  his  work,  according  to  our  ideas  of  justice, 
ought  to  be  measured  by  the  time — the  sociall}*  necessary  time 
— it  occupied.  But  this  whole  argument  is  manifestly  based 
on  nothing  better  than  their  own  arbitrary  conceptions  of 
justice,  and  it  needs  no  great  perspicacity  to  perceive  that 
these  conceptions  of  justice  are  entirely  wrong.  In  fact,  the 
common  sense  of  men  everywhere  would  unhesitatingly  pro- 
nounce it  unjust  to  requite  the  manager  who  contrives, 
organizes,  directs,  with  only  the  same  salary  as  the  labourer 
who  executes  under  his  direction,  because,  while  both  may 
spend  the  same  time  of  labour,  the  service  rendered  by  the 
one  is  much  more  valuable  than  the  service  rendered  by  the 
other.  Let  every  man  have  according  to  his  work,  if  you  will; 
but  then,  in  measuring  work,  the  true  standard  of  its  value  is 
not  its  duration  but  its  social  utility,  the  social  importance  of 
the  service  it  is  calculated  to  render. 

This  criterion  of  social  utility  is  the  principle  that  ought 
to  guide  us  in  answering  the  question  that  is  really  raised 
by  the  particular  socialist  charge  now  under  consideration, 
the  question  of  the  justice  of  interest  on  capital.  Interest  is 
just  because  capital  is  socially  useful,  and  because  the  owner 
of  capital,  in  applying  it  to  productive  purposes,  renders  a 
service  to  society  which  is  valuable  in  the  measure  of  its  social 
utility.  Of  course  the  State  might  perform  this  service  itself. 
It  might  compulsorily  abstract  from  the  produce  of  each  year 
a  sufficient  portion  to  constitute  the  raw  materials  and  in- 
struments of  future  production ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
State  does  not  do  so.  It  leaves  the  service  to  be  rendered 
spontaneously  b}^  private  persons  out  of  their  private  means. 
The  service  rendered  by  these  persons  to  production  is  as  indis- 
pensable as  the  service  rendered  by  the  labourers,  and  the 
justice  of  interest  stands  on  exactly  the  same  ground  as  the 
justice  of  wages.  The  labourer  cannot  produce  by  labour  alone, 
without  materials  and  implements,  any  more  than  the  capitalist 
can  produce  by  materials  and  implements  alone,  without  labour; 
and  the  possessor  of  capital  needs  a  reward  to  induce  him  to 
advance  materials  and  implements  just  as  much  as  the  labourer 
needs  a  reward  to  induce  him  to  labour.     Nobody  will  set  aside 


330  Contemporary  Socialism. 

a  portion  of  his  property  to  provide  for  future  production  if  he 
is  to  reap  no  advantage  from  doing  so,  and  if  the  produce  will 
be  distributed  in  exactly  the  same  way  whether  he  sets  it  apart 
or  not.  It  would  be  as  unjust  as  it  would  be  suicidal  to  with- 
hold the  recompense  to  which  this  service  is  entitled,  and 
without  which  nobody  would  do  it. 

The  real  question  for  socialists  to  answer  is,  not  whether  it 
is  just  to  pay  private  capitaHsts  for  the  service  society  accepts 
at  their  hands,  but  whether  society  can  perform  this  service 
better,  or  more  economically,  without  them;  whether,  in  short, 
the  abolition  of  interest  would  conduce  to  any  real  saving  in 
the  end?  This  practical  question,  crucial  though  it  be,  is  one, 
however,  to  which  they  seldom  address  themselves — they  prefer 
expatiating  in  cloudier  regions.  The  question  may  not,  with 
our  present  experience,  admit  of  a  definitive  and  authoritative 
answer  ;  but  the  probabilities  all  point  to  the  conclusion  that 
capitalistic  management  of  production,  costly  as  it  may  seem 
to  be,  is  really  cheaper  than  that  by  which  socialism  would 
supersede  it.  Capitalistic  management  is  proverbially  un- 
rivalled for  two  qualities  in  which  bureaucratic  management 
is  as  proverbially  deficient — economy  and  enterprise.  Socialists 
complain  much  of  the  hosts  of  middlemen  who  are  nourished 
on  the  present  system,  the  heartless  parasites  who  eat  the 
bread  of  society  without  doing  a  hand's  turn  of  real  good ;  but 
their  own  plan  would  multiply  vastly  the  number  of  un- 
necessary intermediaries  depending  on  industry.  Under  the 
regime  of  the  capitalist  there  are,  we  may  feel  sure,  no  useless 
clerks  or  overseers,  for  he  has  the  strongest  personal  interest  in 
working  his  business  as  economically  as  possible.  But  with 
the  socialist  mandarinate,  the  interest  lies  the  other  way,  and 
the  tendency  of  the  head  officials  would  be  to  multiply  their 
subordinates  and  assistants,  so  that  by  abolishing  the 
capitalist,  society  would  not  by  any  means  have  got  rid  of 
middlemen  and  parasites.  There  would  be  as  much  waste  of 
labour  as  before.  Lord  Brassey  is  certainly  right  in  attri- 
buting the  industrial  superiority  of  Great  Britain  as  much 
to  the  administrative  skill  and  economy  of  her  employers  as 
to  the  efficiency  of  her  labourers.  Individual  capitalists  are 
more  enterprising,  as  well  as  more  economical  managers,  than 


Socialism  aiid  the  Social  Question.  331 

boards.  Their  keenly  interested  eyes  and  ears  are  ever  on  the 
watch  for  opportunities,  for  improvements,  for  new  openings  ; 
and  having  to  consult  nothing  but  their  own  judgment,  they  are 
much  quicker  in  adapting  themselves  to  situations  and  taking 
advantage  of  turns  of  trade.  Tliey  will  undertake  risks  that 
a  board  would  not  agree  to,  and  they  will  have  entered  the 
field  and  established  a  footing  long  before  a  manager  can  get 
his  directors  to  stir  a  finger.  Now  this  habit  of  being  always 
on  the  alert  for  new  extensions,  and  new  processes,  and  new 
investments,  is  of  the  utmost  value  to  a  progressive  communit}', 
and  it  cannot  be  found  to  such  purpose  anywhere  as  with  the 
capitalistic  despot  the  socialists  denounce,  whose  zeal  and 
judgment  are  alike  sharpened  by  his  hope  of  personal  gain  and 
risk  of  personal  loss.  Studnitz  informs  us  that  in  1878  he 
found  the  mills  of  New  York  standing  idle,  but  those  of 
Philadelphia  all  going,  and  his  explanation  is  that  the  former 
were  under  joint-stock  management  and  the  latter  belonged  to 
private  owners.  The  present  tendency  towards  a  multiplica- 
tion of  joint-stock  companies  is  a  perfectly  good  one,  because, 
for  one  thing,  it  helps  to  a  better  distribution  of  wealth  ;  but 
society  would  suffer  if  this  tendency  were  to  be  carried  so  far 
as  to  supersede  independent  private  enterprise  altogether,  and 
if  joint-stock  companies  were  to  become  the  only  form  of  con- 
ducting business.  And  if  private  enterprise  is  more  advan- 
tageous than  joint-stock  management,  because  it  has  more 
initiative  and  adaptability,  so  joint-stock  management  is  for 
the  same  reason  more  advantageous  than  the  official  centralized 
management  of  all  industry.* 

If  there  is  any  force  in  these  considerations,  it  seems  likely 
that  we  should  make  a  bad  bargain,  if  we  dismissed  our  capi- 
talists and  private  employers,  in  the  expectation  that  we  could 
do  the  work  more  cheaply  by  our  own  public  administration. 
And  the  mistake  would  be  especially  disappointing  for  this 
reason,  that  in  the  ordinary  progress  of  society  in  wealth  and 
security  the  rate  of  interest  always  tends  to  fall,  and  that 
various  forces  are  already  in  operation  that  may  not  unreason- 
ably be  expected  to  reduce  the  rate  of  profits  as  well.     Profits, 

*  More  will  be  found  on  tliis  subject  in  the  chapter  on  "  State  Social- 
ism," under  the  sub-heading  "  State  Socialism  and  State  Management." 


332  Contemporary  Socialis7n. 

as  distinguished  jfrom  interest,  are  the  earnings  of  management, 
and  the  minimum  which  employers  will  be  content  to  take  is 
at  present  largely  determined  by  the  entirely  wrong  principle 
that  their  amount  ought  to  bear  a  direct  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  capital  invested  in  the  business.  In  spite  of  com- 
petition, customary  standards  of  this  kind  are  very  influential 
in  the  adjustment  of  such  matters;  they  are  the  usual  criteria 
of  what  are  called  fair  profits  and  fair  wages;  they  always 
carry  with  them  strong  persuasives  to  acquiescence  ;  and  then, 
from  their  very  nature,  they  are  very  dependent  on  public 
opinion.  I  am  not  sanguine  enough  to  believe  with  the  Ameri- 
can economist,  President  F.  A.  Walker,  that  employers  will  ever 
come  to  be  content  with  no  other  reward  than  the  gratification 
of  power  in  the  management  of  a  great  industrial  undertaking ; 
but  there  is  nothing  extravagant  in  expecting  that,  through 
the  influence  of  public  opinion  and  the  constant  pressure  of 
trade  unions,  a  fairer  standard  of  profits  may  be  generally 
adopted,  with  the  natural  consequence  of  allowing  a  rise  of 
wages. 

But  whether  these  expectations  are  well  grounded  or  no,  one 
thing  is  plain, — the  only  thing  really  material  to  the  precise 
issue  at  present  before  us, — and  that  is,  that  while  interest  and 
profits  may  be  both  unfair  in  amount,  just  as  rent  may  be,  or 
wages,  or  judicial  penalties,  neither  of  them  is  unjust  in 
essence,  because  they  are  merely  particular  forms  of  remunerat- 
ing particular  services,  which  are  now  actually  performed  by 
the  persons  who  receive  the  remuneration,  and  which,  under 
the  socialist  scheme,  would  have  to  be  performed — and  in  all 
probability  neither  so  well  nor  so  cheaply — by  salaried  func- 
tionaries. 

With  these  remarks,  we  may  dismiss  the  specific  charge  of 
injustice  brought  by  socialists  against  the  present  order  of 
things,  and  the  specific  claim  of  right  for  the  labouring  class 
which  they  prefer.  Let  us  now  submit  their  proposals  to  a 
more  practical  and  decisive  test — will  they  or  will  they  not 
realize  the  legitimate  aspirations,  the  ideal  of  the  working  class  ? 
Does  socialism  offer  a  better  guarantee  for  the  realization  of 
that  ideal  than  the  existing  economy  ?     I  believe  it  does  not. 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question. 


OJO 


What  is  the  ideal  of  the  working  class  ?  It  may  be  said  to  be 
that  they  shall  share  ^^arf^as^w  in  the  progressive  conquests  of 
civilization,  and  grow  in  comfort  and  refinement  of  life  as  other 
classes  of  the  community  have  done.  Now  this  involves  two 
things — first,  progress ;  second,  diffusion  of  progress ;  and 
socialism  is  so  intent  on  the  second  that  it  fails  to  see  how 
completely  it  would  cut  the  springs  of  the  first.  Some  of  its 
adherents  do  assert  that  production  would  be  increased  and 
progress  accelerated  under  a  socialistic  economy,  but  they  offer 
nothing  in  support  of  the  assertion,  and  certainly  our  past 
experience  of  human  nature  would  lead  us  to  expect  precisely 
the  opposite  result.  The  incentives  and  energy  of  production 
would  be  relaxed.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  loss  that 
would  probably  be  sustained  in  exchanging  the  interested  zeal 
and  keen  ej^e  of  the  responsible  capitalist  employer  for  the 
perfunctory  administration  of  a  State  officer.  A  like  loss  would 
be  suffered  from  lightening  the  responsibility  of  the  labourers 
and  lessening  their  power  of  acquisition.  Under  a  socialist 
regime  they  cannot  by  any  merit  acquire  more  property  than 
they  enjoy  in  daily  use,  and  they  cannot  by  any  fault  fail  to 
possess  that.  Now  socialist  labourers  are  not  supposed,  any 
more  than  socialist  officials,  to  be  angels  from  heaven  ;  they 
are  to  carry  on  the  work  of  society  with  the  ordinary  human 
nature  which  we  at  present  possess  ;  and  in  circumstances  like 
those  just  described,  unstirred  either  by  hope  or  fear,  our 
ordinary  human  nature  would  undoubtedly  take  its  ease  and 
bask  contentedly  in  the  kind  providence  of  the  State  which 
relieved  it  of  all  necessity  for  taking  thought  or  pains.  The 
inevitable  result  would  be  a  great  diminution  of  production, 
which,  with  a  rapidly  increasing  population  (and  socialism 
generally  scouts  the  idea  of  restraining  it),  would  soon  prove 
seriously  embarrassing,  and  could  only  be  obviated  by  a  resort 
to  the  lash  ;  in  a  word,  by  a  return  to  industrial  slavery.  Now, 
with  a  lessening  production,  progress  is  clearly  impossible,  and 
the  more  evenly  the  produce  was  distributed,  the  more  certain 
would  be  the  general  decline. 

Socialists  ignore  the  civilizing  value  of  private  property  and 
inheritance,  because  they  think  of  property  only  as  a  means 
of  immediate  enjoyment,  and  not  as  a  means  of  progress  and 


334  Conte77iporary  Socialisfn. 

moral  development.  They  would  allow  private  property  only 
in  what  is  sometimes  termed  consumers'  wealth.  You  might 
stiU  own  your  clothes,  or  even  purchase  your  house  and  garden. 
But  producers'  wealth,  they  hold,  should  be  common  property, 
and  neither  be  owned  nor  inherited  by  individuals.  If  this 
theory  were  to  be  enforced,  it  would  be  fatal  to  progress. 
Private  property  has  all  along  been  a  great  factor  in  civiliza- 
tion, but  the  private  property  that  has  been  so  has  been  much 
more  producers'  than  consumers'.  Consumers'  wealth  is  a 
limited  instrument  of  enjoyment;  producers'  is  a  power  of 
immense  capability  in  the  hands  of  the  competent.  Socialists 
are  really  more  individualistic  than  their  opponents  in  the 
view  they  take  of  the  function  of  property.  They  look  upon 
it  purely  as  a  means  for  gratifying  the  desires  of  individuals, 
and  ignore  the  immense  social  value  it  possesses  as  a  nurse 
of  the  industrial  virtues  and  an  agency  in  the  progressive 
development  of  society  from  generation  to  generation. 

There  is  still  another  and  even  more  important  spring  of 
progress  that  would  be  stifled  by  socialism — freedom.  Free- 
dom is,  of  course,  a  direct  and  integral  element  in  any  worthy 
Luman  ideal,  for  it  is  an  indispensable  condition  for  individual 
development,  but  here  it  comes  into  consideration  as  an  equally 
indispensable  condition  of  social  progress.  Political  philoso- 
phers, like  W.  von  Humboldt  and  J.  S.  Mill,  who  have  pled 
strongly  for  the  widest  possible  extension  of  individual  free- 
dom, have  made  their  plea  in  the  interests  of  society  itself. 
They  looked  on  individuality  as  the  living  seed  of  progress ; 
without  individuality  no  variation  of  type  or  differentiation  of 
function  would  be  possible  ;  and  without  freedom  there  could 
be  no  individuality.  Under  a  regime  of  socialism  freedom 
would  be  choked.  Take,  for  example,  a  point  of  great  im- 
portance both  for  personal  and  for  social  development,  the 
choice  of  occupations.  Socialism  promises  a  free  choice  of 
occupations ;  but  that  is  vain,  for  the  relative  numbers  that 
are  now  required  in  any  particular  occupation  are  necessarily 
determined  by  the  demands  of  consumers  for  the  particular 
commodity  the  occupation  in  question  sets  itself  to  supply. 
Freedom  of  choice  is,  therefore,  limited  at  present  by  natural 
conditions,  which  cause  no   murmuring ;    but    these   natural 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  335 

conditions  would  still  exist  under  the  socialist  regime,  and  yet 
they  would  perforce  appear  in  the  guise  of  legal  and  artificial 
restrictions.  It  would  be  the  choice  of  the  State  that  would 
determine  who  should  enter  the  more  desirable  occupations, 
and  not  the  ichoice  of  the  individuals  themselves.  The  ac- 
cepted would  seem  favourites ;  the  rejected  would  complain  of 
tja-anny  and  wrong.  Selection  could  not  be  made  by  competi- 
tive examination  without  treason  against  the  principles  of  a 
socialist  state,  nor  by  lot  without  a  sacrifice  of  efRciency.  The 
same  difficulties  would  attend  the  distribution  of  the  fertile 
and  the  poor  soils.  Even  consumption  would  not  escape  State 
inquisition  and  guidance,  for  an  economy  that  pretended  to  do 
away  with  commercial  vicissitudes  must  take  care  that  a 
change  of  fashion  does  not  extinguish  a  particular  industry 
by  superseding  the  articles  it  produces.  Socialism  would 
introduce,  indeed,  the  most  vexatious  and  all-encompassing 
absolutist  government  ever  invented.  It  would  impose  on 
its  central  executive  functions  that  would  require  omniscience 
for  their  discharge,  and  an  authority  so  excessive  that  E.  von 
Hartmann  is  probably  right  in  thinking  that  obedience  could 
only  be  secured  by  fabricating  for  it  the  illusion  of  a  Divine 
origin  and  reinforcing  loyalty  by  superstition.  The  extensive 
centralized  authority  given  to  government  in  France  has  un- 
doubtedly been  one  of  the  main  causes  of  the  instability  of  the 
political  system  of  that  State,  and  a  socialist  rule,  with  its 
vastly  greater  prerogatives,  could  only  maintain  its  ascendancy 
by  being  fabulously  hedged  with  the  divinity  of  a  Grand 
Lama.  A  military  despotism  would  be  at  lesist  more  con- 
sistent with  modem  conditions;  but  a  military  despotism 
socialists  abjure,  and  yet  believe  that  they  can  exact  from 
free  and  equal  citizens  an  almost  animal  submission  to  an 
authority  they  elect  themselves. 

Progress  is  only  possible  on  the  basis  of  industrial  freedom 
and  private  property  ;  and  in  the  socialist  controversy  there  is 
no  question  about  the  necessity  of  progress.  That  is  an  as- 
sumption common  to  both  sides ;  socialists  of  the  present  day 
acknowledge  it  as  implicitly  as  the  general  opinion  of  the  time. 
They  are  no  sharers  in  Mill's  admiration  for  the  stationary 
state;  they  utterly  ridicule  his  Malthusian  horror  of   a  pro- 


33^  Contemporary  Socialism. 

gressive  population  ;  and,  profoundly  impressed  as  tliey  are 
with  the  vital  need  for  a  better  distribution  of  -wealth,  they 
hesitate  to  sacrifice  for  it  an  increasing  production.  On  the 
contrary,  they  claim  for  their  system  that  it  would  stimulate 
progress,  as  well  as  spread  its  blessings,  better  than  the  system 
that  exists,  and  Lassalle  at  all  events  frankly  declared  that 
unless  socialism  increased  production,  it  would  not  be  economic- 
ally justifiable.  But  tried  by  this  test,  we  have  seen  reason 
to  find  it  wanting.  The  problem  to  which  it  addresses  itself, 
the  institution  of  a  sound  and  healthy  distribution  of  wealth, 
is  probably  the  greatest  social  problem  of  the  time ;  but 
socialism  fails  to  solve  it,  because  no  distribution  can  be  sound 
and  healthy  which  destroys  the  conditions  of  further  progress. 
The  true  solution  must  adhere  to  the  lines  of  the  present 
industrial  system,  the  lines  of  industrial  freedom  and  private 
property. 

It  is  one  thing,  however,  to  say  that  the  principles  of  in- 
dustrial freedom  and  private  property  are  essential  to  a  healthy 
distribution,  and  it  is  quite  another  thing  to  hold  that  the 
distribution  is  then  healthiest  and  most  perfect  when  these 
principles  enjoy  the  most  absolute  and  unconditional  operation. 
If  socialism  errs  by  suppressing  them,  laissez-faire  runs  into 
the  opposite  error  of  giving  them  unlimited  authority.  Laissez- 
faire  is  perhaps  hardly  any  longer  a  living  faith.  But  even 
when  men  still  believed  in  the  economic  harmonies,  they 
always  taught  that  the  best  and  justest  distribution  of  wealth 
was  that  which  issued  out  of  the  free  competition  of  in- 
dividuals, and  that  if  this  distribution  ever  turned  out  to  be 
really  faulty  or  partial,  it  was  only  because  the  competition 
was  not  free  or  perfect  enough ;  because  some  of  the  com- 
petitors were  not  sufficiently  enlightened  as  compared  with 
others,  or  not  sufficiently  mobile  with  their  labour  or  capital ; 
in  other  words,  because  the  competition  was  not  conducted  on 
equal  terms.  This  theory  manifestly  makes  the  justice  of  the 
distribution  effected  by  free  competition  to  depend  on  the  false 
assumption  of  the  natural  equality  of  the  competitors,  and 
therefore  as  manifestly  implies  that  unless  men  are  equal  in 
talents  and  opportunities,  the  system  of  unlimited  freedom 
may  produce  a  distribution  that  is  seriously  unjust.      Laissez- 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  337 

faire  tlius  had  a  germ  of  socialism  in  its  being,  and  even  when 
its  ascendancy  seemed  to  be  highest,  it  was  ah-eady  being 
practically  replaced  by  a  larger  and  more  energetic  theory  of 
social  politics  which  imposed  on  the  State  the  duty  of  cor- 
recting manj^  of  the  evils  of  the  present  distribution  of  wealth, 
and  promoting,  if  not  equality  of  all  conditions,  yet  certainly 
amelioration  of  the  inferior  conditions.  Instead  of  maintaining 
equal  freedom  for  weak  and  strong,  the  State  was  to  take 
the  part  of  the  weak  against  the  strong,  in  order  to  secure 
to  all  citizens  a  real  participation  in  progressive  civilization. 
It  is  said  truly  enough  that  the  eflPect  of  such  interferences 
is  not  to  destroy  liberty,  but  to  fulfil  it,  because,  apart  from 
them,  the  labour  contract  is  no  more  a  free  contract  for 
labourers  living  from  hand  to  mouth  than  the  capitulation  of 
a  beleaguered  garrison  when  their  provisions  have  run  down  is 
a  free  capitulation,  and  the  legal  intervention  is  necessary  in 
order  to  make  the  men  first  really  free.  Legal  freedom  is  no 
more  an  end  in  itself  than  legal  intervention ;  both  are  merely 
means  of  giving  men  real  freedom  and  enabling  them  eflfectu- 
ally  to  work  out  their  complete  and  normal  vocation  as  human 
beings.  I  shall  treat  more  iully  of  the  true  theory  of  social 
politics  in  a  subsequent  chapter  on  State  Socialism ;  but  here, 
in  connection  with  its  relation  to  industrial  freedom,  it  will 
be  enough  to  say  that  the  restraints  it  proposes  are  neither 
meant  nor  calculated  to  impair  real  freedom,  and  that  it  is 
separated  from  socialism  by  its  constant  care  to  develop  rather 
than  supersede  individual  responsibility,  to  facilitate  the  spread 
of  private  property  rather  than  suppress  it,  and  to  remove  ob- 
stacles that  are  making  men's  own  efforts  a  nullity  rather  than 
to  substitute  for  those  efforts  the  providence  of  the  State. 

If,  then,  there  is  any  truth  in  these  considerations — if  the 
general  acquisition  of  private  property,  and  not  its  universal 
abolition,  is  the  demand  of  the  working-class  ideal — then  the 
business  of  social  reform  at  present  ought  to  be  to  facilitate 
the  acquisition  of  private  property ;  to  multiply  the  oppor- 
tunities of  industrial  investment  open  to  the  labouring  classes, 
and  to  devise  means  for  credit,  for  saving,  for  insurance,  and 
the  like.     While,  for  reasons  already  explained,  I  have  been 


00' 


Contemporary  Socialism. 


iinab''e  to  agree  with  Mr.  Cairnes'  despondent  view  of  the 
economic  position  of  the  wage-paid  labourers,  I  am  entirely 
at  one  with  him  in  conceiving  the  surest  means  to  their  pro- 
gressive amelioration  to  lie  in  participation,  by  one  means  or 
another,  in  industrial  capital.  Much  good  may  be  done  by  a 
wider  extension  of  trade  unions,  and  a  better  organization  of 
working  class  insurance ;  but  the  labourers  must  not  rest  con- 
tent till  they  have  found  their  way,  under  the  new  conditions 
of  modern  trade,  to  become  capitalists  as  well  as  labourers. 
Co-operative  production  seemsthe  most  obvious  solution  of  this 
problem;  but  it  is  a  mischievous,  though  a  common  mistake, 
to  regard  it  as  the  only  solution.  The  fortunes  of  the  working 
class  are  not  all  embarked  in  one  bottom,  and  their  salvation 
may  be  expected  to  fulfil  itself  in  many  ways.  I  cannot  share 
in  the  lamentation  sometimes  made  because  some  of  the  earlier 
productive  associations  have  departed  from  the  strict  and 
original  form  of  co-operation,  under  which  all  the  shareholders 
in  the  business  were  labourers  and  all  the  labourers  share- 
holders. In  the  present  situation  of  affairs,  variety  of  experi- 
ment is  desirable,  for  only  out  of  many  various  experiments 
can  we  eventually  discover  which  are  most  suitable  to  the 
conditions  and  fittest  to  survive.  Co-operative  production 
would  perhaps  have  been  further  advanced  to-day,  if  co- 
operators  had  not  been  so  faithful  in  their  idolatry  of  their 
original  ideal,  and  had  fostered  instead  of  discouraging  varia- 
tions of  type,  which  may  yet  justify  their  superiority  by 
persisting  and  multiplying.  As  it  is,  co-operative  production 
has  not  been  such  a  complete  failure  as  it  is  sometimes  repre- 
sented ;  it  can  show  at  least  a  few  very  signal  tokens  of  success 
and  great  promise.  It  is  often  declared  to  be  inapplicable  to 
the  great  industries,  because  they  require  more  capital  and 
better  management  than  co-operative  working  men  are  usually 
able  to  furnish.  But  in  the  town  and  neigljibourhood  of  Old- 
ham there  are  100  co-operative  spinning  mills,  with  a  capital 
of  close  on  £8,000,000.  They  are  managed  entirely  by  working 
men,  their  capital  is  contributed  in  £5  shares  by  working  men, 
and  they  have  during  the  last  ten  years  paid  dividends  varying 
from  10  to  45  per  cent.  These  are  joint-stock  companies  rather 
than  co-operative  societies  in  the  stricter  sense ;  but  they  are 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  339 

joint-stock  companies  of  working  men,  and  they  famish  to 
working  men  in  an  effective  and  successful  way  that  partici- 
pation in  the  industrial  capital  of  the  country  which  is  really 
what  is  wanted.  The  Oldham  workman  prefers  to  hold  shares 
in  a  different  mill  from  that  he  works  in,  because  he  feels 
himself  more  free  to  exercise  his  voice  as  a  shareholder  there, 
and  he  prefers  to  carry  his  labour  to  the  mill  where  he  gets 
the  best  wages  and  the  best  treatment,  without  being  obliged 
to  change  his  investment  when  he  changes  his  workshop.  The 
advantage  of  the  Oldham  system  over  the  stricter  co-operative 
tj'pe  is  therefore  the  old  advantage  of  freedom.  It  suits  the 
English  character  better,  and  the  only  wonder  is  why  it  is 
still,  after  more  than  sixteen  j'^ears'  successful  experience,  con- 
fined exclusively  to  a  single  locality.  It  has  been  stated  that 
there  are  a  thousand  operatives  working  at  these  mills  who 
are  worth  i'lOOO  to  £2000,  and  besides  the  mills,  there  are 
co-operative  stores,  building  societies,  and  other  working-class 
companies  in  Oldham,  with  a  combined  capital  of  ^£3,500,000. 
In  all  these  ways  the  zone  of  participators  in  property  broadens, 
and  hope  and  stimulus  are  introduced  into  the  labourer's  life. 
The  truth  seems  to  be  that  the  great  need  of  the  working  man 
is  not  so  much  money  to  invest  as  opportunity  and  motive 
for  investment.  The  amount  lodged  in  savings  banks,  the 
amount  raised  by  trade  unions,  the  amount  wasted  in  drink, 
the  amount  wasted  in  inefficient  household  economy,  which 
might  be  much  lessened  by  better  instruction  in  the  arts  of 
cookery  and  household  management — all  show  that  large 
numbers  of  the  working  class  possess  means  at  their  disposal 
to  constitute  at  least  the  beginnings  of  their  emancipation, 
if  good  opportunities  were  open  to  them  of  using  it  advan- 
tageously in  productive  enterprise.  Co-operation  and  profit- 
sharing  are  not  the  only  means  by  which  this  might  be 
realized.  Private  firms  might  initiate  a  practice  of  reserving 
a  certain  amount  of  their  capital  to  constitute  a  kind  of  stock 
for  their  workmen  to  invest  their  savings  in,  under — if  that 
were  legalized — limited  Hability.  One  advantage  of  this  plan 
over  the  ordinary  industrial  partnership  would  be,  that  while, 
like  it,  it  would  enhance  the  workmen's  zeal  in  their  work, 
it  could  not  possibly  have  the  effect  of  reducing  wages,  because 


340  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  stock  would  be  a  free  investment,  and  would  probably  not 
be  taken  up  by  all  or  by  more  than  a  majority  of  the  workmen. 
Again,  with  a  reform  of  our  land  laws,  small  investments  in 
land  will  certainly  be  facilitated,  especiallj'-  among  the  agri- 
cultural class. 

Socialists  would  no  doubt  condemn  all  such  investments  for 
the  same  reason  as  they  generally  condemn  the  co-operative 
movement,  because  they  would  tend  to  create  "  a  new  class 
with  one  foot  in  the  camp  of  the  bourgeoisie  and  the  other  in 
the  camp  of  the  proletariat."  But  that  is  precisely  one  of 
their  chief  advantages,  and  in  making  this  objection  socialists 
only  betray  how  completely  they  ignore  the  operation  of  those 
portions  of  human  nature  that  are  the  real  forces  and  factors 
of  social  progress.  It  is  only  by  linking  a  lower  class  to  a 
higher  that  you  can  raise  the  level  of  the  whole,  and  every 
pathway  the  working  class  makes  into  a  comfortable  equality 
with  the  lower  bourgeoisie  will  constitute  at  once  an  oppor- 
tunity and  a  spur  for  others  to  follow  them,  which  will  exercise 
an  elevating  effect  upon  the  entire  body.  If  it  were  generally 
open  to  all  the  labouring  classes  to  begin  by  being  wage- 
labourers  and  end  by  sharing  in  some  degree  in  the  industrial 
capital  of  the  country,  this  would  raise  the  level  of  the  whole 
— of  those  who  after  all  remained  wage-labourers  still,  as  well 
as  of  those  who  succeeded  in  gaining  a  better  competency.  It 
would  give  them  all  something  to  keep  looking  forward  to 
during  their  working  life,  something  to  save  for  and  strive 
after,  and  a  higher  standard  of  comfort  would  get  diffused 
and  considered  necessary  in  the  class  generally  through  the 
example  of  the  better  off.  For  the  more  comfortably  situated 
working  men — whether  they  have  won  their  comfort  by  co- 
operation or  otherwise — have  not  passed  out  of  their  class. 
They  have,  as  is  alleged,  one  foot  in  the  camp  of  the  prole- 
tariat still.  They  live  and  move  and  have  their  being  among 
working  people,  and  constitute  by  their  presence  and  social 
connections  a  stimulating  and  elevating  agency.  It  is  through 
connections  like  these  that  the  ideas  of  comfort  and  culture 
that  prevail  among  an  upper  class  permeate  through  to  a 
lower,  and  thus  elevate  the  general  standard  of  living  upon 
which  the  level  of  wages  so  much  depends.     Even  the  minor 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Question.  341 

inequalities  in  tlie  ranks  of  the  working  class  are  not  without 
their  use  in  quickening  their  exertions  to  maintain  the  standard 
of  respectability  which  they  have  won  or  inherited.  Econo- 
mists were  not  wrong  in  ascribing  so  much  influence  as  they 
always  have  done  to  men's  tenacity  in  adhering  to  their 
customary  standard  of  life.  Many  striking  illustrations  of  its 
beneficial  operation  might  be  mentioned.  I  select  one,  because 
it  concerns  an  aspect  of  the  condition  of  the  labouring  classes 
of  this  country  that  is  at  present  attracting  much  attention — 
their  house  accommodation.  In  all  our  large  cities,  the  house 
accommodation  of  the  working  class  has  hitherto  been  about 
as  bad  as  bad  could  be,  but  there  is  one  singular  exception — it 
is  Sheffield.  Porter  drew  attention  to  the  fact  many  years 
ago.  "  The  town  itself,"  he  says,  "  is  ill  built  and  dirty  beyond 
the  usual  condition  of  English  towns,  but  it  is  the  custom 
for  each  family  among  the  labouring  population  to  occupy  a 
separate  dwelling,  the  rooms  of  which  are  furnished  in  a  very 
comfortable  manner.  The  floors  are  carpeted,  and  the  tables 
are  usually  of  mahogany.  Chests  of  drawers  of  the  same 
material  are  commonly  seen,  and  so  in  many  cases  is  a  clock 
also,  the  possession  of  which  article  of  furniture  has  often 
been  pointed  out  as  the  certain  indication  of  prosperity  and 
of  personal  responsibility  on  the  part  of  the  working  man." 
("  Progress  of  the  Nation,"  p.  B23.)  The  same  condition  of 
things  still  prevails,  for  at  the  meeting  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion in  Sheffield  in  1879  Dr.  Hime  read  a  paper  on  the  vital 
statistics  of  the  town,  in  which  he  says : — "Although  handsome 
public  buildings  are  not  a  prominent  feature  in  the  town,  still 
there  are  few  towns  in  England  where  the  great  bulk  of  the 
population  is  so  well  provided  for  in  the  way  of  domestic 
architecture.  Overcrowding  is  very  rare ;  cellar  dwellings  are 
unknown  ;  and  almost  every  family  has  an  entire  house,  a 
most  important  agent  in  securing  physical  as  well  as  moral 
health."  (Transactions  of  British  Association,  1879.)  Now  this 
is  a  fact  of  the  highest  interest,  and  we  naturally  ask  what 
peculiarity  there  is  in  the  trade  or  circumstances  of  Sheffield, 
in  the  first  place,  to  create  such  an  exceptional  excellence  in 
the  standard  of  working  class  house  accommodation,  and,  in 
the  next  place,  to  maintain  it.     One  thing  is  certain :  it  is  not 


342  Contemporary  Socialis^n. 

due  to  better  wages.  There  are  trades  in  Sheffield  very  highly 
paid,  but  the  labourers  belonging  to  them  are  described  by  the 
anonymous  author  of  "  An  Inquiry  into  the  Moral,  Social,  and 
Intellectual  Condition  of  the  Industrious  Classes  of  Sheffield  " 
(London,  1839),  as  being  much  less  comfortable  in  their  circum- 
stances than  the  others.  This  writer  speaks  of  some  trades  t 
in  which  "  the  workmen  are  steady,  intelligent,  and  orderly, 
seldom  the  recipients  of  charity  or  parochial  relief.  They 
depend  on  their  own  exertions  for  the  respectable  maintenance 
of  their  families,  and  when  trade  is  depressed  they  strive  to 
live  on  diminished  wages,  or  faU  back  on  resources  secured  by 
industry  and  economy.  This  healthy  and  vigorous  condition 
is  not  attributable  to  high  wages.  The  workmen  in  the  edge- 
tool  trade  are  extravagantly  remunerated,  and  yet,  as  a  body, 
they  are  perhaps  as  irregular  and  dissipated  in  their  habits  as 
any  in  the  town.  Their  families,  in  time  of  good  trade,  feel 
few  of  the  advantages  of  prosperity,  and  when  labour  is  little 
in  demand,  they  are  the  first  to  need  the  aid  of  charity.  These 
differences  are  familiar  to  the  most  superficial  observer  of  the 
social  and  moral  condition  of  the  workmen  in  the  several 
branches  "  (p.  14).  But  the  same  writer  mentions  a  peculiarity 
in  the  trade  of  Sheffield  which,  he  says,  marks  it  off  from  every 
other  manufacturing  to-vvn,  and  that  peculiarity  may  serve  to 
provide  us  with  the  explanation  we  are  seeking.  "  "With  us," 
he  says,  "  the  distinctions  between  masters  and  men  are  not 
always  well  marked.  Persons  are  to  a  great  extent  both.  The 
transition  from  the  one  to  the  other  is  easy  and  frequent  in 
those  branches  where  the  tools  are  few  and  simple,  and  the 
capital  required  extremely  small,  which  applies  to  the  whole 
of  the  cutlery  department."  "  The  facility  with  which  men 
become  masters  causes  extraordinary  competition,  and  its  in- 
evitable result,  insufficient  remuneration."  "Here  merchants 
and  manufacturers  cannot  become  princes.  .  .  .  There  is 
not  sufficient  play  for  large  fortunes.  The  making  of  fortunes 
is  with  us  a  slow  process.  It  is,  however,  far  from  being 
partial.  .  .  .  The  longer  period  required  in  the  making  of 
them  allows  the  mind  time  to  adapt  itself  to  its  improved 
circumstances,  not  merely  the  speculative  and  money-getting 
part  of  the  understanding,  but  the  whole  of  its  social,  moral, 


Socialism  and  the  Social  Qtiestion.  343 

and  intellectual  powers,  -without  which  means  are  a  question- 
able good.  Wealth  and  intelligence  are  accordingly  with  us 
more  generally  associated  than  in  towns  where  immense  for- 
tunes are  rapidly  made.  In  the  latter  case,  there  is  no  time 
for  adaptation,  nor  is  it  deemed  necessary  or  at  all  important, 
where  money  is  the  measure  by  which  all  things  are  estimated, 
Another  evil  dependent  on  this  sudden  elevation  in  life  is  the 
great  distance  which  is  immediately  placed  between  employer 
and  employed  "  (p.  15).  Class  and  class  are  thus  better  knit 
together  in  Sheffield  than  elsewhere.  The  exceptional  facility 
of  becoming  masters  seems  to  be  the  particular  instrumentality 
which  has  brought  down  the  ideas  and  habits  of  comfort  of 
the  bourgeoisie  and  spread  them  among  the  working  class, 
and  which  has  always  prevented  the  great  mass  of  the  latter 
from  sinking  contentedly  into  a  lower  general  standard  of  life. 
It  introduced  among  them  that  social  ambition,  which  is  the 
most  ejQfective  spur  to  progress,  and  the  best  preservative 
against  decline.  The  fact  that  the  exceptionally  good  house 
accommodation  which  prevails  among  the  labouring  population 
of  Sheffield  is  not  owing  to  exceptional,  or  even  at  all  superior, 
wages,  is  one  of  much  hope  and  encouragement.  What  is 
possible  in  Sheffield  cannot  be  impossible  elsewhere ;  and  what 
is  possible  in  the  matter  of  house  accommodation  cannot  be 
hopeless  in  other  branches  of  consumption. 

I  shall  be  told  that  in  all  this  I  am  only  repeating  the  foolish 
idea  of  the  French  princess,  who  heard  the  people  complain 
they  could  not  get  bread,  and  asked  why  then  they  did  not 
buy  cake.  Where  combinations  are  possible,  it  will  be  said, 
investments  may  be  also  possible  ;  but  the  great  majority  of 
the  working  class  are  not  in  a  position  to  cx)mbine,  and  it  is 
mere  mockery  to  tell  people  to  save  and  invest  who  can  hardly 
contrive  to  cover  their  backs.  To  this  I  reply,  that  there  is  no 
reason  to  assume  that  trade  unions  have  reached  the  utmost 
extension  of  which  they  are  susceptible,  or  to  despair  of  their 
introduction  into  the  hitherto  unorganized  trades.  It  was  only 
lately  common  to  deny  the  possibility  of  combination  among 
agricultural  labourers,  and  yet,  scattered  as  they  are,  they  have 
shown  themselves  not  only  able  to  combine,  but  to  raise  wages 
effectively  by  means  of  their  combinations.      We  have  now 


344  Contemporary  Socialism, 

very  powerful  unions  of  unskilled  day  labourers,  and  a  be- 
ginning has  been  made  of  an  efficient  organization  even 
among  needlewomen.  It  is  true  that,  even  when  organiza- 
tion has  spoken  its  last  word,  much  of  the  distressing  poverty 
that  now  exists  would  probably  still  remain,  because  we  must 
not  disguise  from  ourselves  the  fact  that  much  of  that  poverty 
is  the  direct  fruit  of  vice,  disease,  or  indolence.  But  socialism 
could  not  cope  with  this  mass  of  misery  any  better  than  the 
present  system,  for  men  don't  drink  and  loaf  and  enter  into 
improvident  marriages  or  illicit  alliances  because  they  happen 
to  be  paid  for  their  labour  by  contract  with  a  capitalist  instead 
of  valuation  by  a  State  officer,  and  they  certainly  would  not 
cease  doing  any  of  these  things  because  an  indulgent  State 
undertook  to  save  them  from  the  natural  penalties  of  doing 
them. 


CHAPTER    XI. 

STATE   SOCIALISM. 

I.  State  Socialism  and  English  Economics. 

State  socialism  has  been  described  by  M.  Leon  Say  as  a 
German  philosophy  which  was  natural  enough  to  a  people 
with  the  political  history  and  habits  of  the  Germans,  but  which, 
in  his  opinion,  was  ill  calculated  to  cross  the  French  frontier, 
and  was  contrary  to  the  very  nature  of  the  Anglo-Saxons. 
Sovereign  and  trader  may  be  incompatible  occupations,  as 
Adam  Smith  asserts,  but  in  Germany,  at  least,  they  have  never 
seemed  so.  There,  Governments  have  always  been  accustomed 
to  enter  very  considerably  into  trade  and  manufactures,  partly 
to  provide  the  public  revenue,  partly  to  supply  deficiencies  of 
private  enterprise,  and  partly,  within  more  recent  times,  for 
reasons  of  a  so-called  "  strategic  "  order,  connected  with  the 
defence  or  consolidation  of  the  new  Empire.  The  German 
States  possess,  every  one  of  them,  more  Crown  lands  and 
forests,  in  proportion  to  their  size,  than  any  other  countries  in 
Europe,  some  of  them,  indeed,  being  able  to  meet  half  their 
public  expenditure  from  this  source  alone ;  and  besides  their 
territorial  domain,  most  of  them  have  an  even  more  extensive 
industrial  domain  of  State  mines,  or  State  breweries,  or  State 
banks,  or  State  foundries,  or  State  potteries,  or  State  railways, 
and  their  rulers  are  still  projecting  fresh  conquests  in  the  same 
direction  by  means  of  brandy  and  tobacco  monopolies.  But  in 
England  things  stand  far  otherwise.  She  has  sold  off  most 
of  her  Crown  lands,  and  is  slowly  parting  with,  rather  than 
adding  to,  the  remainder.  She  abolished  State  monopolies  in 
the  days  of  the  Stuarts,  as  instruments  of  political  oppression, 
and  she  has  abandoned  State  bounties  more  recently  as  nurses 
of  commercial  incompetency.     She  owes  her  whole  industrial 

345 


34^  Contemporary  Socialism. 

greatness,  her  manufactures,  her  banks,  her  shipping,  her  rail- 
ways, to  some  extent  her  very  colonial  possessions,  to  the 
unassisted  energy  of  her  private  citizens.  England  has  been 
reared  on  the  principle  of  freedom,  and  could  never  be  brought, 
M.  Say  might  not  unreasonably  conclude,  to  espouse  the  opposite 
principle  of  State  socialism,  unless  the  national  character 
underwent  a  radical  change.  And  yet,  while  he  was  still 
writing,  he  was  confounded  to  see  signs,  as  he  thought,  of  this 
alien  philosophy  obtaining,  not  simply  an  asylum,  but  really 
an  ascendancy  in  this  country.  It  appeared  to  M.  Say  to  be 
striking  every  whit  as  strong  a  root  in  our  soil  and  climate  as 
it  had  done  in  its  native  habitat,  and  he  is  disposed  to  join  in 
the  alarm,  then  recently  sounded  at  Edinburgh  by  Mr.  Goschen, 
that  the  soil  and  climate  had  changed,  that  the  whole  policy, 
opinion,  and  feeling  of  the  English  people  with  respect  to  the 
intervention  of  the  public  authority  had  undergone  a  revolution. 
Mr,  Goschen  had,  in  raising  the  alarm,  shown  some  perplexity 
how  far  to  condemn  the  change  and  how  far  to  praise  it,  but 
he  was  quite  clear  upon  its  reality,  and  was  possessed  by  a 
most  anxious  sense  of  its  magnitude  and  gravity.  "  We  can- 
not," said  he,  "  see  universal  State  action  enthroned  as  a  prin- 
ciple of  government  without  misgiving."  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
took  up  the  cry  with  more  vehemence,  declaring  that  the  age 
of  British  freedom  was  gone,  and  warning  us  to  prepare  for 
"  the  coming  slavery."  M.  de  Lavelej'e,  who  is  unquestionably 
one  of  the  most  careful  and  competent  foreign  observers  of  our 
affairs,  followed  Mr.  Spencer,  and  although,  being  himself  a 
State  socialist,  he  welcomed  this  alleged  new  era  as  much  as 
Mr.  Spencer  deprecated  it,  he  gave  substantially  the  same 
description  of  the  facts ;  he  said,  England,  once  so  jealous  for 
liberty,  was  now  running  ahead  of  all  other  nations  on  the 
career  of  State  socialism.  And  that  seems  to  have  become  an 
established  impression  both  at  home  and  abroad.  The  French 
Academy  of  Moral  and  Political  Sciences  has  devoted  several 
successive  sittings  to  the  subject ;  the  eminent  German  eco- 
nomist. Professor  Nasse,  has  discussed  it — and  with  much 
excellent  discrimination — in  an  article  on  the  decline  of 
economic  individualism  in  England  ;  and  it  is  now  the  current 
assumption  of  the  journals  and  of  popular  conversation  in  this 


State  Socialism.  347 

country,  that  a  profound  change  has  come  over  the  spirit  of 
English  politics  in  the  course  of  the  present  generation — a 
change  from  the  old  trust  in  liberty  to  a  new  trust  in  State 
regulation,  and  from  the  French  doctrine  of  laissez-faire  to  the 
German  doctrine  of  State  socialism. 

But  this  assumption,  notwithstanding  the  currency  it  has 
obtained  and  the  distinguished  authorities  by  whom  it  is  sup- 
ported, is  in  reality  exaggerated  and  undiscriminating.  "While 
marking  the  growing  frequency  of  Government  interventions, 
it  makes  no  attempt  to  distinguish  between  interventions  of 
one  kind  and  interventions  of  another  kind,  and  it  utterly  fails 
to  recognise  that  English  opinion — whether  exhibited  in  legis- 
lative work  or  economic  writings — was  not  dominated  by  the 
principle  of  laissez-faire  in  the  past  any  more  than  in  the 
present,  but  that  it  really  has  all  along  obeyed  a  fairly  well- 
defined  positive  doctrine  of  social  politics,  which  gave  the 
State  a  considerable  concurrent  role  in  the  social  and  industrial 
development  of  the  community.  The  increasing  frequency  of 
■  Government  interventions  is  in  itself  a  simple  and  unavoidable 
ebticomitant  of  the  growth  of  society.  With  the  rapid  trans- 
formations of  modern  industrial  life,  the  increase  and  concen- 
tration of  population,  and  the  general  spread  of  enlightenment, 
we  cannot  expect  to  retain  the  political  or  legislative  inactivity 
of  stationary  ages.  As  Mr,  Hearn  remarks,  "  All  the  volumes 
of  the  statutes,  from  their  beginning  under  Henry  III.  to  the 
close  of  the  reign  of  George  11.,  do  not  equal  the  quantity  of 
legislative  work  done  in  a  decade  of  any  subsequent  reign." 
("  Theory  of  Legal  Duties  and  Rights,"  p.  21.)  The  process 
has  been  continuous  and  progressive,  and  it  suffered  no  inter- 
ruption in  the  period  which  is  usually  supposed  to  have  been 
peculiarly  sacred  to  laissez-faire.  On  the  contrary,  that  period 
will  be  found  to  exceed  the  period  that  went  before  it  in  legis- 
lative activity,  exactly  as  it  has  in  turn  been  itself  exceeded  by 
our  own  time.  On  any  theory  of  the  State's  functions,  an 
increase  in  the  number  of  laws  and  regulations  was  inevitable ; 
it  was  only  part  and  portion  of  the  natural  growth  of  things  ; 
but  such  an  increase  affords  no  evidence,  not  even  a  presump- 
tion, of  any  change  in  the  principles  by  which  legislation  is 
governed,  or  in  the  purposes  or  functions  for  which  the  power 


34^  Contemporary  Socialism. 

of  the  State  is  habitually  invoked.  A  mere  growth  of  work  is 
not  a  multiplication  of  functions ;  to  get  a  result,  we  must  first 
analyze  the  work  done  and  discriminate  this  from  that. 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  when  compared  with  other  nations, 
England  has  been  doing  singularly  little  in  the  direction — the 
distinctively  socialistic  direction — of  multiplying  State  indus- 
tries and  enlarging  the  public  property  in  the  means  of  pro- 
duction. Municipalities,  indeed,  have  widened  their  industrial 
domain  considerably  ;  it  has  become  common  for  them  to  take 
into  their  own  hands  things  like  the  gas  and  water  supply  of 
the  community  which  would  in  any  case  be  monopolies,  and 
their  management,  being  exposed  to  an  extremely  effective 
local  opinion,  is  generally  very  advantageous.  But  while  local 
authorities  have  done  so  much,  the  central  Government  has 
held  back.  Many  new  industries  have  come  into  being  during 
the  present  reign,  but  we  have  nationalized  none  of  them 
except  the  telegraphs.  We  have  added  to  the  Post-Office  the 
departments  of  the  Savings  Bank  and  the  Parcels  Post ;  we 
have,  for  purely  military  reasons,  extended  our  national  dock- 
yards and  arms  factories  since  the  Crimean  war,  but  without 
thereby  enhancing  national  confidence  in  Government  manage- 
ment ;  we  have,  for  diplomatic  purposes,  bought  shares  in  the 
Suez  Canal ;  we  have  undertaken  a  few  small  jobs  of  testing 
and  stamping,  such  as  the  branding  of  herrings ;  but  we  are 
now  the  only  European  nation  that  has  no  State  railway  ;  we 
have  refrained  from  nationalizing  the  telephones,  though 
legally  entitled  to  do  so  ;  and  we  very  rarely  give  subventions 
to  private  enterprises.  This  is  much  less  the  effect  of  deliberate 
political  conviction  than  the  natural  fruit  of  the  character  and 
circumstances  of  the  people,  of  their  powerful  private  resources 
and  those  habits  of  commercial  association  which  M.  Chevalier 
speaks  of  with  so  much  friendly  envy,  complaining  that  his 
own  countrymen  could  never  be  a  great  industrial  nation 
because  they  had  no  taste  for  acquiring  them.  In  the  English 
colonies,  where  capital  is  more  scarce,  Government  is  required 
to  do  very  much  more  ;  most  of  them  have  State  railways,  and 
some — New  Zealand,  for  instance — State  insurance  offices  for 
fire  and  life.  These  colonial  experiments  will  have  great  weight 
with  the  English  public  in  settling  the  problem  of  Government 


State  Socialism.  349 

management  under  a  democracy,  and  if  they  prove  successful, 
will  undoubtedly  influence  opinion  at  home  to  follow  their 
example ;  but  as  things  are  at  present,  there  is  no  appearance 
of  any  great  body  of  English  opinion  moving  in  that  direction. 
But  while  England  has  lagged  behind  other  nations  in  this 
particular  class  of  Government  intervention,  there  is  another 
class  in  which  she  has  undoubtedly  run  far  before  them  all.  If 
we  have  not  been  multiplying  State  industries,  we  have  been 
very  active  in  extending  and  establishing  popular  rights,  by 
means  of  new  laws,  new  administrative  regulations,  or  new 
systems  of  industrial  police.  In  fact,  the  greater  part  of  our 
recent  social  legislation  has  been  of  this  order,  and  it  is  of  that 
legislation  M.  de  Laveleye  is  thinking  when  he  says  England  is 
taking  the  lead  of  the  nations  in  the  career  of  State  socialism. 
But  that  is  nothing  new ;  if  we  are  in  advance  of  other  nations 
in  establishing  popular  rights  to-day,  we  have  been  in  advance 
of  them  in  that  work  for  centuries  already.  That  peculiarity 
also  has  its  roots  in  our  national  history  and  character,  and  is 
no  upstart  fashion  of  the  hour.  Now,  without  raising  the  ques- 
tion whether  the  rights  which  our  recent  social  legislation  has 
seen  fit  to  establish,  are  in  all  cases  and  respects  rights  that 
ought  to  have  been  established,  it  is  sufficient  for  our  present 
purpose  to  observe  that  at  least  this  is  obviously  a  very  dif- 
ferent class  of  intervention  from  the  last,  because  if  it  does  not 
belong  to,  it  is  certainly  closely  allied  with,  those  primary 
duties  which  are  everywhere  included  among  the  necessary 
functions  of  all  government,  the  protection  of  the  citizen  from 
force  and  fraud.  To  protect  a  right,  you  must  first  establish 
it ;  you  must  first  recognise  it,  define  its  scope,  and  invest  it 
with  the  sanction  of  authority.  With  the  progress  of  society 
fresh  perils  emerge  and  fresh  protections  must  be  devised  ;  the 
old  legal  right  needs  to  be  reconstructed  to  meet  the  new 
situation,  or  a  new  right  must  be  created  hitherto  unknown 
perhaps,  unless  by  analogy,  to  the  law.  But  even  here  the 
novelty  lies,  not  in  the  principle — for  all  right  is  a  protection 
of  the  weak,  or  ought  to  be  so — but  in  the  situation  alone  ;  in 
the  rise  of  the  factory  system,  which  called  for  the  Factory 
Acts ;  in  the  growth  of  large  towns,  which  called  for  Health 
and  Dwellings  Acts ;  in  the  extension  of  joint-stock  companies. 


350  Co7itemporary  Soaalisin. 

which,  called  for  the  Limited  Liability  Acts  ;  in  the  monopoly 
of  railway  transportation,  which  called  for  the  regulation  of 
rates  ;  or  in  the  spread  of  scientific  agriculture,  which  required 
the  constitution  of  a  new  sort  of  property,  the  property  of  a 
tenant-farmer  in  his  own  unexhausted  improvements. 

This  peculiarity  of  the  industrial  and  social  legislation  of 
England  has  not  escaped  the  acute  intelligence  of  Mr.  Goschen. 
Mistrustful  as  he  is  of  Grovernment  intervention,  Mr.  Goschen 
observes  with  satisfaction  that  the  great  majority  of  recent 
Government  interventions  in  England  have  been  undertaken 
for  moral  rather  than  economic  ends.  After  quoting  Mr. 
Thorold  Rogers'  remark,  that  these  interventions  generally 
had  the  good  economic  aim  of  preventing  the  waste  of  national 
resources,  he  says :  "  But  I  believe  that  certainly  in  the  case 
of  the  Factory  Acts,  and  to  a  great  extent  in  the  case  of  the 
Education  Acts,  it  was  a  moral  rather  than  an  economic  influ- 
ence— the  conscientious  feeling  of  what  was  right  rather  than 
the  intellectual  feeling  of  ultimate  material  gain  —  it  was 
the  public  imagination  touched  by  obligations  of  our  higher 
nature — which  supplied  the  tremendous  motive-power  for 
passing  laws  which  put  the  State  and  its  inspectors  in  the 
place  of  father  or  mother  as  guardians  of  a  child's  education, 
labour,  and  health,"  ("  Addresses,"  p.  62.) 

The  State  interfered  not  because  the  child  had  a  certain  capi- 
tal value  as  an  instrument  of  future  production  which  it  would 
be  imprudent  to  lose,  but  because  the  child  had  certain  rights 
— certain  broad  moral  claims — as  a  human  being  which  the 
parents'  natural  authority  must  not  be  suffered  to  violate  or 
endanger,  and  which  the  State,  as  the  supreme  protector  of  all 
rights,  really  lay  under  a  simple  moral  obligation  to  secure. 
Reforms  of  this  character  are  naturally  inspired  by  moral  in- 
fluences, by  sentiments  of  justice  or  of  humanity,  by  a  feeling 
that  wrong  is  being  done  to  a  class  of  the  community  who  are 
placed  in  a  situation  of  comparative  weakness,  inasmuch  as 
they  are  deprived — whether  through  the  force  of  circumstances 
or  the  selfish  neglect  of  their  superiors — of  what  public  opinion 
recognises  to  be  essential  conditions  of  normal  human  existence. 
Now,  most  of  the  legislation  which  has  led  Mr,  Goschen  to  de- 
clare that  universal  State  action  is  now  enthroned  in  England 


State  Socialism.  351 

has  belonged  to  this  order.  It  has  been  gnided  by  ethical  and 
not  by  economic  considerations.  It  has  been  employed  mainly 
in  readjusting  rights,  in  establishing  fresh  securities  for  just 
dealing  and  humane  living;  but  it  has  been  very  chary  of 
following  Continental  countries  in  nationalizing  industries. 
When  therefore  Mr.  Spencer  tells  M.  de  Laveleye  that  the 
reason  why  England  is  extending  the  functions  of  her  Govern- 
ment so  much  more  than  other  nations  "  is  obviously  because 
there  is  great  scope  for  the  further  extension  of  them  here, 
while  abroad  there  is  little  scope  for  the  further  extension  of 
them,"  his  explanation  is  singularly  inappropriate.  England 
has  not  been  extending  the  functions  of  Government  all  round, 
but  she  has  moved  in  the  direction  where  she  had  less  scope  to 
move,  and  has  stood  still  in  the  direction  where  she  had  more 
scope  to  move  than  other  countries.  And  it  is  important  to 
keep  this  distinction  in  mind  when  we  hear  it  so  often  stated 
in  too  general  terms  that  we  have  discarded  our  old  belief  in 
individual  liberty  and  set  up  "  universal  State  action  "  in  its 
place. 

But  those  who  complain  of  England  having  broken  off  from 
her  old  moorings,  not  only  exaggerate  her  leanings  to  authority 
in  the  present,  but  they  also  ignore  her  concessions  to  authority 
in  the  past.  English  statesmen  and  economists  have  never 
entertained  the  rigid  aversion  to  Government  interference  that 
is  vulgarly  attributed  to  them,  but  with  all  their  profound 
belief  in  individual  liberty  they  have  always  reserved  for  the 
Government  a  concurrent  sphere  of  social  and  economic  activity 
— what  may  even  be  designated  a  specific  social  and  economic 
mission.  A  few  words  may  be  usefully  devoted  to  this  English 
doctrine  of  social  politics  here,  not  merely  because  they  may 
serve  to  dispel  a  prevailing  error,  but  because  they  will  furnish 
a  good  vantage-ground  for  seizing  and  judging  of  a  principle 
of  government  which  is  to-day  in  every  mouth,  but  unfor- 
tunately bears  in  every  mouth  a  different  meaning — the  prin- 
ciple of  State  socialism. 

It  is  commonly  believed  that  the  English  doctrine  of  social 
politics  is  the  doctrine  of  laissez-faire,  and  our  economists  are 
continually  reviled  as  if  they  sought  to  leave  the  world  to  the 
play  of  self-interest  and  competition,  unchecked  by  any  ideas 


352  Contemporary  Socialism. 

of  social  justice  or  individual  liuman  right.  But  in  truth  the 
doctrine  of  laissez-faire  has  never  been  held  by  any  English 
thinker,  unless,  perhaps,  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  Mr.  Spencer's 
first  work,  "  Social  Statics,"  was  an  exposition  of  the  theory 
that  the  end  of  all  government  was  the  liberty  of  the  in- 
dividual, the  realization  for  every  citizen  of  the  greatest 
amount  of  liberty  it  was  possible  for  him  to  enjoy  without 
interfering  with  the  corresponding  claims  of  his  fellow-citizens. 
The  individual  had  only  one  right — the  right  to  equal  freedom 
with  everybody  else,  and  the  State  had  only  one  duty — the 
duty  of  protecting  that  right  against  violence  and  fraud.  It 
could  not  stir  beyond  that  task  without  treading  on  the  right 
of  some  one,  and  therefore  it  ought  not  to  stir  at  all.  It  had 
nothing  to  do  with  health,  or  religion,  or  morals,  or  education, 
or  relief  of  distress,  or  public  convenience  of  any  sort,  except 
to  leave  them  sternly  alone.  It  must,  of  course,  renounce  the 
thought  of  bounties  and  protective  duties,  but  it  must  also 
give  up  marking  plate,  minting  coin,  and  stamping  butter ; 
it  must  take  no  part  in  building  harbours  or  lighthouses  or 
roads  or  canals ;  and  even  a  town  council  cannot  without 
offence  undertake  to  pave  or  clean  or  light  the  streets  under 
its  jurisdiction.  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  Mr.  Spencer  refuses 
to  be  bound  now  by  every  detail  of  his  youthful  theory,  but 
he  has  repeated  the  substance  of  it  in  his  recent  work,  "  The 
Man  versus  The  State,"  which  is  written  to  prove  that  the 
only  thing  we  want  from  the  State  is  protection,  and  that  the 
protection  we  want  most  of  late  is  protection  against  our  pro- 
tector. 

This  theory  is  certainly  about  as  extreme  a  development  of 
individualism  as  could  well  be  entertained  ;  and  though  it  has 
been  even  distanced  in  one  or  two  points  by  Wilhelm  von 
Humboldt — who  objected,  for  example,  to  marriage  laws* — no 


*  It  is  only  fair  to  this  eminent  man  to  remember  that  his  mature 
opia  dons  must  not  be  looked  for  in  his  essay,  "  Ideen  zu  einem  Versuch 
die  GrSnzen  der  Wirksamkeit  des  Staats  zu  bestimmen,"  which  was  writ- 
ten in  his  early  youth,  and  never  published  until  after  its  author's  death. 
Although  in  this  work  he  condemns  all  State  education,  he  lived  to  be  a 
famous  Minister  of  Education  himself,  and  to  take  a  great  part  in  estab- 
lishing the  Prussian  system  of  public  instruction. 


State  Socialism.  353 

important  English,  writer  lias  ventured  near  it.  Tlie  description 
of  the  State's  business  as  the  business  of  protecting  the  citizens 
from  force  and  fraud,  has  indeed  been  familiar  in  our  literature 
since  the  days  of  Locke,  and  isolated  passages  may  be  cited 
from  the  works  of  various  political  thinkers,  which,  if  taken  by 
themselves,  would  seem  to  deny  to  the  State  any  right  to  act 
except  for  purposes  of  self-protection.  John  Stuart  Mill  him- 
self  speaks  sometimes  in  that  way,  although  we  know,  from  the 
chapter  he  devotes  to  the  subject  of  Government  interference 
in  his  "Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  that  he  really  as- 
signed to  the  State  much  wider  functions.  When  we  examine 
the  writings  of  English  economists  and  statesmen,  and  the 
principles  they  employ  in  the  discussion  of  the  social  and  indus- 
trial questions  of  their  time,  it  seems  truly  strange  how  they 
ever  came  to  be  credited  with  any  scruple  on  ground  of 
principle  to  invoke  the  power  of  the  State  for  the  solution  of 
such  questions  when  that  seemed  to  them  likely  to  prove  of 
effectual  assistance. 

The  social  doctrine  which  has  prevailed  in  England  for  the 
last  century  is  "  the  simple  and  obvious  system  of  natural 
liberty  "  taught  by  Adam  Smith  ;  but  the  simple  and  obvious 
system  of  natural  liberty  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
system  of  laissez-faire  with  which  it  is  so  commonly  con- 
founded. Its  main  principle,  it  is  true,  is  this  :  "  Every  man," 
says  Smith,  "  as  long  as  he  does  not  violate  the  laws  of  justice, 
is  left  perfectly  free  to  pursue  his  own  interest  his  own 
way,  and  to  bring  both  his  industry  and  capital  into  com- 
petition with  those  of  any  other  man  or  order  of  men.  The 
Sovereign  is  completely  discharged  from  a  duty,  in  the  attempt- 
ing to  perform  which  he  must  always  be  exposed  to  innumerable 
delusions,  and  for  the  proper  performance  of  which  no  human 
wisdom  or  knowledge  could  ever  be  sufficient:  the  duty  of 
superintending  the  industry  of  private  people  and  of  directing 
it  towards  the  employments  most  suitable  to  the  interests  of 
the  society."  ("  Wealth  of  Nations,"  book  iv.,  chap,  ix.)  But 
while  the  Sovereign  is  discharged  from  an  industrial  duty 
which  he  is  incapable  of  performing  satisfactorily,  he  is  far 
from  being  discharged  from  all  industrial  responsibility  what- 
soever, for  Smith  immediately  proceeds  to  map  out  the  limits 

A  A 


354  Contemporary  Socialism. 

of  his  functions  as  follows  :  "According  to  the  system  of  natural 
liberty,  the  Sovereign  has  only  three  duties  to  attend  to — three 
duties  of  great  importance,  indeed,  but  plain  and  intelligible  to 
common  understandings :  first,  the  duty  of  protecting  the  society 
from  the  violence  or  invasion  of  other  independent  societies  ; 
second,  the  duty  of  protecting,  as  far  as  possible,  every  member 
of  the  society  from  the  injustice  or  oppression  of  every  other 
member  of  it,  or  the  duty  of  establishing  an  exact  administra- 
tion of  justice ;  and  thirdly,  the  duty  of  erecting  and  main- 
taining certain  works  and  certain  public  institutions  which  it 
can  never  be  for  the  interest  of  any  imdividual  or  small  number 
of  individuals  to  erect  and  maintain ;  because  the  profit  could 
never  repay  the  expense  to  any  individual  or  small  number  of 
individuals,  though  it  may  frequently  do  much  more  than  repay 
it  to  a  great  society." 

The  State  is  required  to  protect  us  from  other  evils  besides 
the  evils  of  force  and  fraud — infectious  diseases,  for  example, 
are  in  the  context  mentioned  expressly — and  to  supply  us  with 
many  other  advantages  besides  the  advantage  of  protection. 
Some  of  these  advantages  are  of  a  material  or  economic  order, 
and  others  of  an  intellectual  or  moral.  The  material  advan- 
tages consist  for  the  most  part  of  provisions  for  facilitating  the 
general  commerce  of  the  country — such  things  as  roads,  canals, 
harbours,  the  post,  the  mint — or  provisions  for  facilitating  par- 
ticular branches  of  commerce :  and  among  these  he  instances 
the  incorporation  of  joint-stock  companies  endowed  by  charter 
with  exclusive  trading  privileges ;  and  the  reason  which,  ac- 
cording to  Smith,  entitles  the  State  to  intervene  in  this  class  of 
cases,  and  which  at  the  same  time  prescribes  the  length  to 
which  its  intervention  may  legitimately  go,  is  that  individuals 
are  unable  to  do  the  work  satisfactorily  themselves,  or  that,  the 
State  has  from  its  nature  superior  qualifications  for  the  task. 
The  intellectual  or  moral  advantages  which  Smith  asks  from  the 
State  are  mostly  provisions  for  sustaining  the  national  manhood 
and  character,  such  as  a  system  of  compulsory  military  training 
or  a  system  of  compulsory — and  if  not  gratuitous,  still  cheap — 
education ;  and  it  is  important  to  mark  that  he  asks  for  these 
measures,  not  on  the  ground  of  their  political  or  military  expe- 
diency, but  on  the  broad  ground  that  cowardice  and  ignorance 


State  Socialism.  355 

are  in  themselves  public  evils,  from  which  the  State  is  as  much 
bound,  if  it  can,  to  save  the  people,  as  it  is  bound  to  save  them 
from  violence  or  fraud.  Of  military  training  he  observes :  "To 
prevent  that  sort  of  mental  mutilation,  deformity,  and  wretched- 
ness which  cowardice  necessarily  involves  in  it  from  spreading 
themselves  through  the  great  body  of  the  people,  would  deserve 
the  serious  attention  of  Government,  in  the  same  manner  as  it 
would  deserve  its  most  serious  attention  to  prevent  a  leprosy 
or  any  other  loathsome  and  offensive  disease,  though  neither 
mortal  nor  dangerous,  from  spreading  itself  among  them,  though 
perhaps  no  other  public  good  might  result  from  such  attention 
besides  the  prevention  of  so  great  a  public  evil."  ("  Wealth  of 
Nations,"  book  v.,  chap,  i.)  And  he  proceeds  to  speak  of  educa- 
tion :  "  The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  gross  ignorance  and 
stupidity  which  in  a  civilized  society  seems  so  frequently  to 
benumb  the  understanding  of  all  the  inferior  ranks  of  people. 
A  man  without  the  proper  use  of  the  intellectual  faculties  of  a 
man  is,  if  possible,  more  contemptible  than  even  a  coward,  and 
seems  to  be  mutilated  and  deformed  in  a  still  more  essential  part 
of  the  character  of  human  nature.  Though  the  State  was  to 
derive  no  advantage  from  the  instruction  of  the  inferior  ranks 
of  people,  it  would  still  deserve  its  attention  that  they  should 
not  be  altogether  uninstructed."  Compulsory  military  training 
and  a  system  of  national  education  would  no  doubt  be  con- 
ducive to  the  stricter  ends  of  all  government ;  the  one  would 
strengthen  the  defences  of  the  nation  against  foreign  enemies 
and  the  other  would  tend  to  the  diminution  of  crime  at  home ; 
but  Smith,  it  will  be  seen,  explicitly  refuses  to  take  that  ground. 
The  State's  duty  in  the  case  would  be  the  same,  though  no 
such  results  were  to  follow,  for  the  State  has  other  duties  to 
perform  besides  the  maintenance  of  peace  and  the  repression 
of  crime.  It  would  probably  be  admitted,  he  thinks,  that  it 
was  as  incumbent  on  the  State  to  take  steps  to  arrest  the  pro- 
gress of  a  "  mortal  and  dangerous  "  disease  as  it  was  to  stop  a 
foreign  invasion;  but  he  goes  further,  and  contends  that  it  was 
equally  incumbent  on  the  State  to  arrest  the  progress  of  a 
merely  "loathsome  and  offensive"  disease,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  such  a  disease  was  a  mutilation  or  deformity  of  our  physical 
manhood.    And  just  as  the  State  ought  to  prevent  the  mutilation 


35^  Contemporary  Socialism. 

and  deformity  of  our  physical  manhood,  so  the  State  ought  to 
prevent  the  mutilation  and  deformity  of  our  moral  and  intellec- 
tual manhood,  and  was  bound  accordingly  to  provide  a  system 
of  military  training  and  a  system  of  popular  education,  to 
prevent  people  growing  up  ignorant  and  cowardly,  because  the 
ignorant  man  and  the  coward  were  men  without  the  proper  use 
of  the  faculties  of  a  man,  and  were  mutilated  and  deformed  in 
essential  parts  of  the  character  of  human  nature.  At  bottom 
Smith's  principle  is  this — that  men  have  an  original  claim — a 
claim  as  original  as  the  claim  to  safety  of  life  and  property — to 
all  the  essential  conditions  of  an  unmutilated  and  undeformed 
manhood,  and  that  is  really  only  another  expression  for  the 
principle  that  lies  at  the  foundation  of  all  civil  and  human 
right,  that  men  have  a  right  to  the  essential  conditions  of  a 
normal  humanity,  to  the  presuppositions  of  all  humane  living, 
to  the  indispensable  securities  for  the  proper  realization  of  our 
common  vocation  as  human  beings.  The  right  to  personal 
liberty — to  the  power  of  working  for  ends  of  our  own  prescrib- 
ing, and  the  right  to  property — to  the  power  of  retaining  what 
we  have  made,  to  Idc  the  instrument  of  further  activities  for  the 
ends  we  have  prescribed  for  ourselves— rest  really  on  no  other 
ground  than  that  the  privileges  claimed  are  essential  conditions 
of  a  normal,  an  unmutilated  and  undeformed  manhood,  and  it 
is  on  this  broad  ground  that  Adam  Smith  justifies  the  State's 
intervention  to  stop  disease  and  supply  education. 

Smith  held  but  a  poor  opinion  of  the  capacities  of  Govern- 
ment management,  and  especially  of  English  Government 
management,  which,  he  asserted,  was  characterized  in  times 
of  peace  by  "  the  slothful  and  negligent  profusion  that  was 
natural  to  monarchies,"  and  in  times  of  war  by  "  all  the 
thoughtless  extravagance  "  that  was  peculiar  to  democracies  ; 
but  nevertheless  he  had  no  hesitation  in  asking  Government  to 
undertake  a  considerable  number  of  industrial  enterprises, 
because  he  believed  that  these  were  enterprises  which  Govern- 
ment with  all  its  faults  was  better  fitted  to  conduct  success- 
fully than  private  adventurers  were.  On  the  other  hand, 
Smith  entertained  the  highest  possible  belief  in  individual 
Uberty,  but  he  had  never  any  scruple  about  sacrificing  liberty 
of  contract  where  the  sacrifice  was  demanded   by  the  great 


State  Socialism.  357 

moral  end  of  Government — the  maintenance  of  just  and  hu- 
mane dealing  between  man  and  man.  For  example,  the  sup- 
pression of  the  truck  s^'stem,  which  is  sometimes  condemned 
as  an  undue  interference  with  freedom  of  contract,  was 
strongly  supported  by  Smith,  who  declared  it  to  be  "quite 
just  and  equitable,"  inasmuch  as  it  merely  secured  to  the 
workmen  the  pay  they  were  entitled  to  receive  and  "  imposed 
no  real  hardship  on  the  masters — it  only  obliged  them  to  pay 
that  value  in  money  which  they  pretended  to  pay,  but  did  not 
really  pay,  in  goods."  It  was  only  a  just  and  necessary  pro- 
tection of  the  weaker  party  to  a  contract  against  an  oppressive 
exaction  to  which,  like  the  apothecary  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet," 
his  poverty  might  have  consented,  but  not  his  will.  Precisely 
analogous  is  Smith's  position  concerning  usury  laws.  Usury- 
laws  are  seldom  defended  now  ;  for  one  thing,  money  has  be- 
come so  abundant  that  the  competition  of  lender  with  lender 
may  be  trusted  to  as  a  better  security  for  fair  and  reasonable 
treatment  of  borrowers  than  a  Government  enactment  could 
provide.  But  Smith  in  his  day  was  strongly  in  favour  of  fixing 
a  legal  rate  of  interest,  because  he  thought  it  was  necessary 
to  prevent  the  practice  of  extortion  by  unscrupulous  dealers  on 
necessitous  clients.  His  views  on  truck  and  usury  show  that 
he  had  no  sj^mpathy  with  those  who  contend  that  the  State 
must  on  no  account  interfere  with  grown-up  people  in  the 
bargains  they  may  make,  inasmuch  as  grown-up  people  may 
be  expected  to  be  quite  capable  of  looking  effectively  after 
their  own  interest.  Smith  recognised  that  grown-up  people 
were  often  in  natural  circumstances  where  it  was  practically 
impossible  for  them  to  assert  effectively  not  their  interests 
merel}',  but  even  their  essential  claims  as  fellow-citizens  ;  and 
that  therefore  it  was  the  State's  duty  to  come  to  the  aid  of 
those  whose  own  economic  position  was  weak,  and  to  force 
upon  the  strong  certain  responsibilities — or  at  least  secure  for 
the  weak  certain  broad,  positive  conditions — which  just  and 
humane  dealing  might  demand. 

Now,  in  these  ideas  about  truck  and  usury,  as  in  the  pro- 
posals previously  touched  upon  for  checking  the  growth  of 
disease  or  cowardice  or  ignorance,  is  not  the  principle  of  social 
politics  that  is  applied  by  Smith  precisely  the  principle  that 


35^  Contemporary  Socialism. 

runs  through  our  whole  recent  social  legislation — factory,  sani- 
tary, and  educational — the  principle  of  the  State's  obligation 
to  secure  the  people  in  the  essential  conditions  of  all  normal 
manhood  ?  German  writers  often  take  Smith  for  an  exponent, 
if  not  for  the  founder,  of  what  they  call  the  Rechtstaat  theory 
— the  theory  that  the  State  is  mainly  the  protector  of  right ; 
but  in  reality  Smith's  doctrine  corresponded  pretty  closely 
with  their  own  Kultur-und-WohIfah)'tstaaf  theory — the  theory 
that  the  State  is  a  promoter  of  culture  and  welfare  ;  and  if 
further  proof  were  wanted,  it  might  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
in  his  doctrine  of  taxation  he  departs  altogether  from  the  eco- 
nomic principle,  which  is  popularly  associated  with  the  Eecht- 
staat  idea,  and  is  supposed  to  be  a  corollary  of  it,  that  a  tax  is 
a  quid  pro  quo,  a  price  paid  for  a  service  rendered,  and  ought 
therefore  to  be  imposed  on  individuals  in  proportion  to  the 
service  they  respectively  receive  from  the  State ;  and  instead 
of  this  economic  principle  he  lays  down  the  broad  ethical  one, 
that  a  tax  is  a  public  obligation  which  individuals  ought  to 
be  called  upon  to  discharge  in  proportion  to  their  respective 
abilities.  The  rich  cannot  fairly  be  said  to  get  more  good  from 
the  State  than  the  poor ;  they  probably  get  less,  because  they 
are  better  capable  of  providing  for  their  own  defence  ;  but  the 
rich  are  able  to  do  more  good  to  the  State  than  the  poor,  and 
because  they  are  able,  they  are  bound. 

Such  is  the  social  doctrine  of  x4.dam  Smith,  and  it  is  mani- 
festly no  doctrine  of  rigid  individualism,  calling  out  for  free- 
dom at  any  price,  or  banning  all  interference  with  the  natural 
play  of  self-interest  and  competition.  The  natural  liberty  for 
which  the  great  English  economist  contended  was  not  the 
mere  ghost  of  liberty  worshipped  by  Mr.  Spencer.  An 
ignorant  man  might  be  free,  as  an  imprisoned  man  was  free, 
within  limits,  but  he  was  not  free  within  normal  human  limits. 
He  had  not  the  use  of  his  mind ;  he  was  wanting  in  an  essen- 
tial part  of  his  manhood.  First  make  him  a  man — a  whole, 
complete,  competent  man,  fit  for  man's  vocation — then  make 
him  free.  There  is  a  common  metaphysical  distinction  be- 
tween the  formal  freedom  of  the  will  and  the  material  freedom 
of  the  will.  The  drunkard,  the  lunatic,  is  formally  free,  for  he 
exerts  his  choice,  but  he  is  materially  enslaved.     The  difference 


State  Socialism.  359 

between  liberty  according  to  Mr.  Spencer  and  liberty  accord- 
ing to  Adam  Smith  is  something  analogous.  The  liberty 
Smith  desires  is  a  substantial  liberty  ;  it  is  clothed  with  a  body 
— a  definite  body  of  universal  human  rights — which  the  State 
is  bound  to  realize  as  it  would  realize  liberty  itself.  The  reason 
of  his  difference  from  the  laissez-faire  theory  of  Mr.  Spencer, 
which  is  so  often  erroneously  attributed  to  him,  is  that  he 
takes  a  much  broader  and  more  practical  view  of  the  original 
moral  rights  of  individuals  than  such  ultra-individualists  are 
accustomed  to  do.  While  they  hold  that  the  State  is  there 
only  to  secure  to  individuals  reality  and  equality  of  freedom, 
he  holds  it  is  there  to  secure  them  reality  and  equality  of 
all  moral  rights.  He  would  supply  all  alike,  therefore,  with 
certain  material  securities — the  material  conditions  necessary 
to  secure  their  moral  rights  with  equal  completeness, — and  he 
would  protect  them  in  the  enjoyment  of  those  conditions 
against  the  assaults  of  poverty  and  misfortune  no  less  than 
the  assaults  of  murderers  and  thieves.  But  beyond  this  line 
he  would  refuse  to  go ;  if  he  stands  clearly  out  in  advance  of 
the  laissez-faire  position  of  equality  of  legal  freedom,  he 
stands  equally  clearly  far  short  of  the  socialistic  position  of 
equality  of  material  conditions. 

Now  this  doctrine  of  the  great  founder  of  English  political 
economy  has  been  substantially  the  doctrine  of  his  successors 
as  well.  It  would  be  beyond  my  present  scope  to  trace  the 
history  of  the  doctrine  of  social  politics  through  the  writings 
of  the  whole  succession  of  English  economists,  nor  is  it  neces- 
sary. I  shall  choose  a  representative  economist  from  the 
group  who  are  generally  reckoned  the  most  narrow  and 
unsympathetic,  who  are  accused  of  having  shifted  political 
economy  off  the  broader  Hues  on  which  it  had  been  launched  by 
Smith,  who  are  counted  the  great  idolaters  of  self-interest  and 
natural  law,  and  the  scientific  associates  of  the  much-abused 
Manchester  school — viz.,  the  disciples  of  Ricardo.  Ricardo 
himself  touches  only  incidentally  on  the  functions  of  the  State, 
but  he  then  does  so  to  defend  interventions,  such  as  minting 
money,  marking  plate,  testing  drugs,  examining  medical  can- 
didates, and  the  like,  which  are  meant  to  guard  people  against 
deceptions  they  are  themselves  incompetent  to  detect.     More- 


360  Contemporary  Socialism. 

over,  lie  was  a  strong  advocate  for  at  least  one  important 
extension  of  the  State's  industrial  role — lie  would  establisli 
a  National  Bank  of  issue  with  exclusive  privileges  ;  and  it  is 
not  uninteresting  to  remember  that  in  his  place  in  Parliament 
he  brought  forward  the  suggestion  of  a  system  of  Government 
annuities  for  the  accommodation  of  working  men,  which  was 
introduced  by  Mr.  Gladstone  half  a  century  later,  and  has  been 
denounced  in  certain  quarters  as  that  statesman's  first  step  in 
socialism,  and  that  he  was  one  of  a  very  small  minority  who 
voted  for  a  Parliamentary  inquiry  into  the  social  system  of 
Robert  Owen. 

But  if  Ricardo  is  comparatively  silent  on  the  subject,  we 
fortunately  possess  a  very  ample  discussion  of  it  by  one  of 
his  leading  disciples,  J.  E,.  McCulloch.  When  Ricardo  died, 
James  Mill  wrote  to  McCulloch,  "  As  you  and  I  are  his  two 
and  only  genuine  disciples,  his  memory  must  be  a  point  of 
connection  between  us  ; "  and  it  was  on  McCulloch  that  the 
mantle  of  the  master  descended.  His  "  Principles  of  Political 
Economy,"  which  may  be  said  to  be  an  exposition  of  the 
system  of  economics  according  to  Ricardo,  was  for  many  years 
the  principal  textbook  of  the  science,  and  will  still  be  admitted 
to  be  the  best  and  most  complete  statement  of  what,  in  the 
cant  of  the  present  day,  is  called  orthodox  political  economy. 
McCulloch,  indeed,  is  more  than  merely  the  expositor  of  that 
system ;  he  is  really  one  of  its  founders,  the  author  of  one  of 
its  most  famous  dogmas,  at  least  in  its  current  form,  the  now 
exploded  doctrine  of  the  Wages  fund  ;  and  of  all  the  adherents 
of  this  orthodox  tradition,  McCulloch  is  commonly  considered 
the  hardest  and  most  narrow.  There  are  economists  who  are 
supposed  to  show  a  native  generous  warmth  which  all  the 
severities  of  their  science  are  unable  to  quell.  John  Stuart 
Mill  is  known  to  have  come  under  St.  Simonian  influences 
in  his  younger  days,  and  to  have  been  fond  ever  afterwards  of 
calling  himself  a  socialist ;  and  Professor  Sidgwick,  in  our  own 
day,  is  often  credited — and  not  unjustly — with  a  like  breadth 
of  heart,  and  in  publishing  his  views  of  Government  inter- 
ference, he  gives  them  the  name  of  "  Economic  Socialism." 
But  in  selecting  McCulloch,  I  select  an  economist  the  rigour 
of  whose   principles   has   never    been   suspected,  and   yet  so 


State  Socialism.  361 

striking  is  the  uniformity  of  the  English  tradition  on.  this 
subject,  that  in  reality  neither  Mill  nor  Mr,  Sidgwick 
professes  a  broader  doctrine  of  social  politics,  or  goes  a  step 
further,  or  more  heartily  on  the  road  to  socialism  than  that 
accredited  champion  of  individualism,  John  Ramsay  Mc- 
Culloch. 

McCulloch's  "  Principles  "  contains — from  the  second  edition 
in  1830  onward  to  the  last  author's  edition  in  1849 — a  special 
chapter  on  the  limits  of  Government  interference ;  and  the 
chapter  starts  with  an  explicit  repudiation  of  the  doctrine  of 
laUsez-faire^  which  was  then  apparently  only  beginning  to 
come  into  vogue  in  England. 

"  An  idea,"  says  McCulloch,  "  seems  however  to  have  been 
recently  gaining  ground  that  the  duty  of  the  Government  with 
regard  to  the  domestic  policy  of  the  country  is  almost  entirely 
of  a  negative  kind,  and  that  it  has  merely  to  maintain  the 
security  of  property  and  the  freedom  of  industry.  But  its  duty 
is  by  no  means  so  simple  and  easily  defined  as  those  who  sup- 
port this  opinion  would  have  us  to  believe.  It  is  certainly  true 
that  its  interference  with  the  pursuits  of  individuals  has  been, 
in  very  many  instances,  exerted  in  a  wrong  direction,  and 
carried  to  a  ruinous  excess.  Still,  however,  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  we  should  fall  into  a  very  great  error  if  we  supposed  that 
it  might  be  entirely  dispensed  with.  Freedom  is  not,  as  some 
appear  to  think,  the  end  of  government ;  the  advancement  of 
the  public  prosperity  and  happiness  is  its  end  ;  and  freedom  is 
valuable  in  so  far  only  as  it  contributes  to  bring  it  about.  In 
laying  it  down,  for  example,  that  individuals  should  be  per- 
mitted, without  let  or  hindrance,  to  engage  in  any  business  or 
profession  they  may  prefer,  the  condition  that  it  is  not  injurious 
to  others  is  always  understood.  No  one  doubts  the  propriety 
of  a  Government  interfering  to  suppress  what  is  or  might 
otherwise  become  a  public  nuisance  ;  nor  does  any  one  doubt 
that  it  may  advantageously  interfere  to  give  facilities  to  com- 
merce by  negotiating  treaties  with  foreign  powers,  and  by 
removing  such  obstacles  as  cannot  be  removed  by  individuals. 
But  the  interference  of  Government  cannot  be  limited  to  cases 
of  this  sort.  However  disinclined,  it  is  obliged  to  interfere  in  an 
infmite  variety  of  ways  and  for  an  infinite  variety  of  purposes. 


3^2  Contemporary  Socialism. 

It  must,  to  notice  only  one  or  two  of  the  classes  of  objects 
requiring  its  interference,  decide  as  to  the  species  of  contract 
to  which  it  will  lend  its  sanction,  and  the  means  to  be  adopted 
to  enforce  true  performance ;  it  must  decide  in  regard  to  the 
distribution  of  the  property  of  those  who  die  intestate,  and  the 
effect  to  be  given  to  the  directions  in  wills  and  testaments ; 
and  it  must  frequently  engage  itself,  or  authorize  individuals 
or  associations  to  engage,  in  various  sorts  of  undertakings 
deeply  affecting  the  rights  and  interests  of  others  and  of 
society.  The  furnishing  of  elementary  instruction  in  the 
ordinary  branches  of  education  for  all  classes  of  persons  and 
the  establishment  of  a  compulsory  provision  for  the  support 
of  the  destitute  poor  are  generally  also  included,  and  appar- 
ently with  the  greatest  propriety,  among  the  duties  incumbent 
on  administration  "  (p.  262). 

He  allows  State  ownership  and  State  management  of  in- 
dustrial works,  wherever  State  ownership  and  management  are 
more  efficient  for  the  purpose  than  private  enterprise — in  other 
words,  where  they  are  more  economical — as  in  the  cases  of  the 
coinage,  roads,  harbours,  postal  communication,  etc.  He  would 
expropriate  land  for  railway  purposes,  grant  a  monopoly  to 
the  railway  company,  and  then  subject  it  to  Government  con- 
trol in  the  public  interest ;  he  would  impose  many  sorts  of 
restrictions  on  freedom  of  contract,  freedom  of  industry,  free- 
dom of  trade,  freedom  of  property,  and  freedom  of  bequest ; 
and,  what  is  more  important,  he  recognises  clearly  that  with 
the  growth  of  society  fresh  interferences  of  a  serious  character 
will  be  constantly  called  for,  which  may  in  some  cases  involve 
the  application  of  entirely  new  principles,  or  throw  on  the 
Government  work  of  an  entirely  new  character. 

For  example,  he  is  profoundly  impressed  with  the  dangers 
of  the  manufacturing  system,  which  he  saw  growing  and 
multiplying  all  around  him,  and  so  far  from  dreaming  that  the 
course  of  industry  should  remain  uncontrolled,  he  even  ven- 
tures, in  a  remarkable  passage,  to  express  the  doubt  whether 
it  may  not  "  in  the  end  be  found  that  it  was  unwise  to  allow 
the  manufacturing  system  to  gain  so  great  an  ascendancy  as 
it  has  done  in  this  country,  and  that  measures  should  have 
been  early  adopted  to  check  and  moderate  its  growth  "  (p.  191). 


State  Socialism.  '\6 


o^o 


He  admits  that  a  decisive  answer  to  this  question  could  only 
be  given  by  the  economists  of  a  future  generation,  after  a 
longer  experience  of  the  system  than  was  possible  when  he 
wrote,  but  he  cannot  conceal  the  gravest  apprehension  at  the 
preponderance  which  manufactures  were  rapidly  gaining  in 
our  industrial  economy.  And  his  reasons  are  worthy  of 
attention.  The  first  is  the  destruction  of  the  old  moral  ties  that 
knit  masters  and  men  together. 

"  But  we  doubt  whether  any  country,  how  wealthy  soever, 
should  be  looked  upon  as  in  a  healthy,  sound  state,  where  the 
leading  interest  consists  of  a  small  number  of  great  capitalists, 
and  of  vast  numbers  of  workpaople  in  their  employment,  but 
unconnected  with  them  by  any  ties  of  gratitude,  sympathy,  or 
affection.  This  estrangement  is  occasioned  by  the  great  scale 
on  which  labour  is  now  carried  on  in  most  businesses;  and 
by  the  consequent  impossibility  of  the  masters  becoming 
acquainted,  even  if  they  desired  it,  with  the  great  bulk  of 
their  workpeople.  .  .  .  The  kindlier  feelings  have  no  share 
in  an  intercourse  of  this  sort  ;  speaking  generally,  everything 
is  regulated  on  both  sides  by  the  narrowest  and  most  selfish 
views  and  considerations  ;  a  man  and  a  machine  being  treated 
with  about  the  same  sympathy  and  regard  "  (p.  193). 

The  second  reason  is  the  suppression  of  the  facilities  of  ad- 
vancement enjoyed  by  labourers  under  the  previous  regime. 
"  Owing  to  the  greater  scale  on  which  employments  are  now 
mostly  carried  on,  workmen  have  less  chance  than  formerly  of 
advancing  themselves  or  their  families  to  any  higher  situation, 
or  of  exchanging  the  character  of  labourers  for  that  of  masters  " 
(p.  188).  For  the  majority  of  the  working-class  to  be  thus,  as 
he  expresses  it,  "  condemned  as  it  were  to  perpetual  helotism," 
is  not  conducive  to  the  health  of  a  nation.  The  third  reason 
is  the  comparative  instability  of  manufacturing  business.  It 
becomes  a  matter  of  the  most  serious  concern  for  a  State, 
"  when  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  population  has  been, 
through  their  agency,  rendered  dependent  on  foreign  demand, 
and  on  the  caprices  and  mutations  of  fashion  "  (p.  192).  That 
also  is  a  state  of  things  fraught  with  danger  to  the  health  of 
a  community.  McCuUoch  always  treats  political  economy  as 
if  he  defined  it — and  the  definition  would  be  better  than  his 


364  Contemporary  Socialism. 

own — as  the  science  of  tlie  working  of  industrial  society  in 
health  and  disease ;  and  he  always  throws  on  the  State  a  con- 
siderable responsibility  in  the  business  of  social  hygiene  ;  going 
so  far,  we  have  seen  in  the  passages  just  quoted,  as  to  suggest 
whether  a  legal  check  ought  not  to  have  been  imposed  on  the 
free  growth  of  the  factory  system,  on  account  of  its  bad  effects 
on  the  economic  position  of  the  labouring  class.  We  had 
suffered  the  system  to  advance  too  far  to  impose  that  check 
now,  but  there  were  other  measures  which,  in  his  opinion,  the 
Legislature  might  judiciously  take  in  the  same  interest.  It  is 
of  course  impossible,  by  Act  of  Parliament,  to  infuse  higher 
views  of  duty  or  warmer  feelings  of  ordinary  human  regard 
into  the  relations  between  manufacturers  and  their  workmen  ; 
but  the  State  might,  according  to  McCulloch,  do  something  to 
mitigate  the  modern  plague  of  commercial  crises,  by  a  policy 
of  free  trade,  by  adopting  a  sound  monetary  system,  by  secur- 
ing a  continuance  of  peace,  and  by  "  such  a  scheme  of  public 
charity  as  might  fully  relieve  the  distresses  without  insulting 
the  feelings  or  lessening  the  industry  of  the  labouring  classes  " 
(p.  192). 

As  with  commercial  crises,  so  with  other  features  of  the 
modern  industrial  system ;  wherever  they  tend  to  the  deteriora- 
tion of  the  labouring  class,  McCulloch  always  holds  the  State 
bound  to  intervene,  if  it  can,  to  prevent  such  a  result.  He 
would  stop  the  immigration  of  what  is  sometimes  called  pauper 
labour — of  bodies  of  workpeople  brought  up  in  an  inferior 
standard  of  life — because  their  example  and  their  competition 
tend  to  pull  down  the  native  population  to  their  own  level. 
The  example  he  chooses  is  not  the  Jewish  element  in  the  East 
End  of  London,  but  the  much  more  important  case  of  the 
Irish  immigration  into  Liverpool  and  Glasgow  ;  and  while  he 
would  prefer  to  see  Government  taking  steps  to  improve  the 
Irish  people  in  Ireland  itself,  he  declares  that,  if  that  is  not 
practicable,  then  "justice  to  our  own  people  requires  that 
measures  should  be  adopted  to  hinder  Great  Britain  from  being 
overrun  with  the  outpourings  of  this  offldna  pauperum,  to 
hinder  Ireland  from  dragging  us  down  to  the  same  hopeless 
abyss  of  pauperism  and  wretchedness  in  which  she  is  sunk  " 
(p.  422).     This  policy  may  be  wise,  or  it  may  not,  but  it  shows 


State  Socialism.  365 

very  plainly — what  appears  so  often  in  his  writings — how 
deeply  McCulloch's  mind  was  penetrated  with  the  conviction 
that  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  the  dangers  from  which  the 
State  ought  to  do  what  it  well  can  to  preserve  the  people,  was 
the  danger  of  falling  to  a  lower  standard  of  tastes  and  require- 
ments, and  thereby  losing  ambition  and  industry,  and  the  very 
possibility  of  rising  again. 

"  This  lowering  of  the  opinions  of  the  labouring  class  with 
respect  to  the  mode  in  which  they  should  live  is  perhaps  the 
most  serious  of  all  the  evils  that  can  befall  them.  .  .  .  The 
example  of  such  individuals  or  bodies  of  individuals  as  submit 
quietly  to  have  their  wages  reduced,  and  who  are  content  if 
they  get  only  mere  necessaries,  should  never  be  held  up  for 
pubUo  imitation.  On  the  contrary,  everything  should  be  done 
to  make  such  apathy  be  esteemed  discreditable.  The  best 
interests  of  society  require  that  the  rate  of  wages  should  be 
elevated  as  high  as  possible — that  a  taste  for  comforts  and 
enjoyments  should  be  widely  diffused,  and,  if  possible,  inter- 
woven with  national  habits  and  prejudices.  Very  low  wages, 
by  rendering  it  impossible  for  increased  exertions  to  obtain  any 
considerable  increase  of  advantages,  effectually  hinder  them 
from  being  made,  and  are  of  all  others  the  most  powerful  cause 
of  that  idleness  and  apathy  that  contents  itself  with  what  can 
barely  continue  animal  existence  "  (p.  415). 

And  he  goes  on  to  refute  the  idea  of  Benjamin  Franklin, 
that  high  wages  breed  indolent  and  dissipated  habits,  and  to 
contend  that  they  not  only  improve  the  character  and  efficiency 
of  the  labourer,  but  are  in  the  end  a  source  of  gain,  instead 
of  loss,  to  the  employer.  But,  although  the  maintenance  of  a 
high  rate  of  wages  is  so  great  an  object  of  public  solicitude,  it 
was  an  object  Avhich  it  was,  in  McCulloch's  judgment,  outside 
the  State's  province,  simply  because  it  was  outside  its  power, 
to  do  anything  directly  to  promote,  because  while  authority 
could  fix  a  price  for  labour,  it  could  never  compel  employers 
to  engage  labour  at  that  price ;  and  consequently  its  inter- 
ference in  such  a  way  would  only  end  in  injury  to  the  class 
it  sought  to  befriend,  as  well  as  to  the  trade  of  the  country  in 
general.  Still,  McCulloch  is  far  from  wishing  to  repel  the 
State's   offices  or  the  offices  of  public   opinion  in    connection 


366  Contemporary  Socialism. 

with  the  business  altogether.  In  the  passage  just  quoted  he 
expressly  makes  an  appeal  to  public  opinion  for  an  active 
interference  in  a  direction  where,  he  believes,  its  interference 
might  be  useful ;  and  as  for  the  action  of  the  State,  he  approves, 
for  one  thing,  of  the  legalization  of  trades  unions,  and,  for 
another,  of  the  special  instruction  of  the  public,  at  the  national 
expense,  in  the  principles  on  which  a  high  rate  of  wages 
depend. 

In  regard  to  the  Factory  Acts,  while  he  would  have  the 
hours  of  labour  in  the  case  of  grown-up  men  settled  by  the 
parties  themselves,  because  he  thought  them  the  only  persons 
competent  to  settle  them  satisfactorily,  he  strongly  supported 
the  interference  of  the  Legislature,  on  grounds  of  ordinary 
humanity,  to  limit  the  working  day  of  children  and  women, 
because  "  the  former  are  naturally,  and  the  latter  have  been 
rendered,  through  custom  and  the  institutions  of  society,  unable 
to  protect  themselves"  (p.  426)  ;  and  he  seconded  all  Lord 
Shaftesbury's  labours  down  to  the  Ten  Hours  Act  of  1847,  to 
which  he  objected  on  the  ground  that  it  involved  a  practical 
interference  with  all  adult  factory  labour.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  was  in  favour  of  the  principle  of  employers'  liability  for 
accidents  in  mines  and  workshops,  because  there  seemed  no 
other  way  of  saving  the  labourers  from  their  own  careless- 
ness, except  by  making  the  masters  responsible  for  the  enforce- 
ment of  the  necessary  regulations  (p.  307). 

But  McCuUoch's  general  position  on  this  class  of  questions  is 
still  better  exemplified  in  the  view  he  takes  of  the  State's  duty 
on  a  matter  of  great  present  interest,  the  housing  of  the  poor. 
Here  he  has  no  hesitation  in  throwing  the  principal  blame  for 
the  bad  accommodation  of  the  working-classes  of  that  day,  for 
the  underground  cellar  dwellings  of  Liverpool  and  Manchester, 
the  overcrowded  lodging-houses  of  London,  and  the  streets  of 
cottages  unsupplied  with  water  or  drainage,  on  "  the  culpable 
inattention  of  the  authorities."  Mr.  Goschen  vindicates  the 
legitimacy  of  Government  interference  with  the  housing  of 
the  people,  on  the  ground  that  it  is  the  business  of  Govern- 
ment to  see  justice  done  between  man  and  man.  When  a  man 
hired  a  house.  Government  had  a  right  to  see  that  he  got  a 
house,  and  a  house  meant  a  dwelling  fit  for  human  habitation. 


State  Socialism.  2t^'j 

The  inspection  of  houses  is,  according  to  this  idea,  only  a  case 
of  necessary  protection  against  fraud,  like  the  institution  of 
medical  examinations,  the  assaying  of  metals,  or  the  testing  of 
drugs ;  and  protection  against  fraud  is  admitted  everywhere  to 
be  the  proper  business  of  Government.  McCulloch  bases  his 
justification  of  the  intervention  on  much  broader  grounds. 
Government  needs  no  other  warrant  for  condemning  a  house 
that  is  unfit  for  human  habitation  but  the  simple  fact  that  the 
house  is  unfit  for  human  habitation,  and  it  makes  no  difference 
whether  the  tenant  is  cheated  into  taking  the  bad  house,  or 
takes  it  openly  because  he  prefers  it.  In  fact,  the  strongest 
reason,  in  McCulloch's  opinion,  for  invoking  Government  inter- 
ference in  the  case  at  all,  is  precisely  the  circumstance  that  so 
many  people  actually  prefer  unwholesome  houses  from  motives 
of  economy. 

"  Sucli  cottages,"  he  says,  "  being  cheap,  are  always  sure  to 
find  occupiers.  Nothing,  however,  can  be  more  obvious  than 
that  it  is  the  duty  of  Government  to  take  measures  for  the 
prevention  and  repair  of  an  abuse  of  this  sort.  Its  injurious 
influence  is  not  confined  to  the  occupiers  of  the  houses  referred 
to,  though  if  it  were,  that  would  be  no  good  reason  for  declin- 
ing to  introduce  a  better  system.  But  the  diseases  engendered 
in  these  unhealthy  abodes  frequently  extend  their  ravages 
through  all  classes  of  the  community,  so  that  the  best  interests 
of  the  middle  and  higher  orders,  as  well  as  of  the  lowest,  are 
involved  in  this  question.  And,  on  the  same  principle  that  we 
adopt  measures  to  guard  against  the  plague,  we  should  en- 
deavour to  secure  ourselves  against  typhus,  and  against  the 
brutalizing  influence,  over  any  considerable  portion  of  the 
population,  of  a  residence  amid  filth  and  disease  "  (p.  308). 

The  last  clause  is  remarkable.  The  State  is  required  to 
protect  the  people  from  degrading  influences,  to  prevent  them 
from  being  brutalized  through  the  avarice  or  apathy  of  others, 
and  to  prevent  them  being  brutalized  through  the  avarice  or 
apathy  of  themselves.  It  is  not  what  many  persons  would 
expect,  but  here  we  have  political  economy,  and  the  most 
"  orthodox  "  political  economy,  forcing  people  to  go  to  a  dearer 
market  for  their  houses,  in  order  to  satisfy  a  sentiment  of 
humanity,  and  imposing  on  the  State  a  social  mission  of  a 


3 


68  Contemporary  Socialism. 


broad  positive  character — the  mission  of  extirpating  brutalizing 
influences.  Yet,  expected  or  not,  this  is  really  the  ordinary- 
tradition  of  English  economists — it  is  the  principle  laid  down 
by  Smith  of  obliging  the  State  to  secure  for  the  people  an  un- 
mutilated  and  undeformed  manhood,  to  provide  for  them  by 
public  means  the  fundamental  conditions  of  a  humane  existence. 

McCulloch's  position  comes  out  more  clearly  still  in  the 
reasons  he  gives  for  advocating  a  compulsory  provision  for  the 
able-bodied  poor,  and  a  national  system  of  popular  education. 
With  regard  to  the  impotent  poor,  he  is  content  with  saying 
that  it  would  be  inhumanity  to  deny  them  support,  and  in- 
justice to  throw  their  support  exclusively  on  the  benevolent. 
A  poor-rate  is  sometimes  defended  on  what  are  professed  to  be 
strictly  economical  grounds,  by  showing  that  it  is  both  less 
mischievous  and  less  expensive  than  mendicity ;  but  what 
strikes  McCulloch  is  not  so  much  the  wastefulness  of  private 
charity  in  the  hands  of  the  benevolent  as  the  injustice  of  suffer- 
ing the  avaricious  to  escape  their  natural  obligations.  Few, 
however,  have  much  difficulty  in  finding  one  good  reason  or 
another  for  making  a  public  provision  for  the  impotent  poor ; 
the  crux  of  the  question  of  public  assistance  is  the  case-  of  the 
able-bodied  poor.  A  provision  for  the  able-bodied  poor  is 
practically  a  recognition  in  a  particular  form  of  "  the  right  to 
labour,"  and  the  right  to  labour  resounds  with  many  revolu- 
tionary terrors  in  our  English  ears,  although  it  has,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  been  practised  quietly,  and  most  of  the  time  in  one  of 
its  most  pernicious  forms,  in  every  parish  of  England  for 
nearly  three  hundred  years. 

Now  on  this  question  McCulloch  was  a  convert.  He  con- 
fessed to  the  Committee  on  the  State  of  the  Poor  in  Ireland,  in 
1830,  that  he  had  changed  his  V-iews  on  the  subject  entirely 
since  his  previous  evidence  in  1825.  He  had  formerly  been, 
he  said,  "too  much  imbued  with  mere  theory,  with  the 
opinions  of  Malthus  and  Townsend "  ;  but  he  had  become  a 
firm  believer  in  the  necessity  and  the  public  advantage  of  a 
legal  provision  for  the  able-bodied  poor,  and  he  strongly  re- 
commended the  introduction  of  such  a  system  into  Ireland,  in 
the  first  instance  as  an  instrument  of  individual  relief,  but  also 
as  an  effectual  engine  of  social  improvement.     He  gives  the 


State  Socialism.  369 

reasons  for  his  conversion  partly  in  his  evidence,  and  partly  in  a 
more  systematic  form  in  his  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy." 
First,  Malthus  had  attributed  to  the  Poor  Law  itself  effects 
which  really  sprang  from  certain  bad  arrangements  that  had 
been  engrafted  on  the  English  system  of  relief,  but  were  not 
essential  to  it — viz.,  the  allowance  system,  and  the  law  known 
as  Gilbert's  Act,  which  deprived  parishes  of  the  right  to  refuse 
relief  except  in  workhouses,  and  forced  them  to  provide  work 
for  paupers,  if  paupers  desired  it,  at  or  near  their  own  houses. 
These  two  arrangements,  in  McCiilloch's  opinion,  converted 
the  English  provision  for  the  able-bodied  poor  from  what  we 
may  term  a  wise  and  conditional  right  of  labour  into  an  unwise 
and  dangerous  one.  In  the  second  place,  he  had  come  to  see 
that  a  legal  provision  for  the  poor,  instead  of  having,  as  was 
alleged,  a  necessary  tendency  to  multiply  pauperism,  had  in 
reality  a  natural  tendency-  to  prevent  its  growth,  because  it 
gave  the  landlords  and  influential  ratepayers  a  strong  pecuniary 
as  well  as  moral  interest  in  producing  that  result.  Its  effect 
was  thus  to  establish  in  every  parish  a  new  local  stimulus  to 
social  improvement,  and  it  was  on  account  of  this  effect  of  a 
Poor  Law  that  McCuUoch  thought  it  would  be  specially  benefi- 
cial to  Ireland,  because  there  was  nothing  Ireland  needed  more 
than  just  such  a  local  stimulus.  In  the  third  place,  he  had 
become  more  and  more  profoundly  impressed  with  the  in- 
creasing gravitj^  of  the  vicissitudes  and  fluctuations  of  employ- 
ment to  which  English  labourers  were  subject  since  England 
became  mainly  a  manufacturing  country,  and  that  unhappy 
feature  of  manufacturing  industry  was  his  principal  reason  for 
invoking  legislative  assistance.  A  purely  agricultural  country, 
he  thought,  might  be  able  to  do  without  a  Poor  Law,  because 
agricultural  employment  was  comparatively  steady ;  but  in  a 
manufacturing  country  a  Poor  Law  was  indispensable,  on  ac- 
count of  the  long  periods  of  depression  or  privation  which  were 
normal  incidents  in  the  life  of  labour  in  such  a  country,  and  on 
account  of  the  pernicious  effect  which  these  periods  of  priva- 
tion would,  if  unchecked,  be  certain  to  exercise  upon  the 
character  and  habits  of  the  labouring  classes,  through  "  lower- 
ing their  estimate  of  what  is  required  for  their  comfortable 
and  decent  subsistence."     ("Political  Economy,"  p.  448.) 

B  B 


Syo  Contemporary  Socialism. 

"During  these  periods  of  extraordinary  privation  tlie  labourer, 
if  not  effectually  relieved,  would  imperceptibly  lose  that  taste 
for  order,  decency,  and  cleanliness  which  had  been  gradually 
formed  and  accumulated  in  better  times  by  the  insensible  opera- 
tion of  habit  and  example,  and  no  strength  of  argument,  no 
force  of  authority,  could  again  instil  into  the  minds  of  a  new 
generation,  growing  up  under  more  prosperous  circumstances, 
the  sentiments  and  tastes  thus  uprooted  and  destroyed  by  the 
cold  breath  of  penury.  Every  return  of  temporary  distress 
would  therefore  vitiate  the  feelings  and  lower  the  sensibilities 
of  the  labouring  classes  "  (p.  449). 

McCulloch  quotes  these  words  from  Barton,  but  he  quotes 
them  to  express  his  own  view,  and  their  teaching  is  very 
explicit  on  the  duty  of  Government  to  the  unemployed  in 
seasons  of  commercial  distress.  In  such  seasons  of  "  extra- 
ordinary privation "  the  State  is  called  upon  to  take  "effectual" 
measures — extraordinary  measures,  we  may  infer,  if  extra- 
ordinary measures  were  necessary — for  the  relief  of  the  un- 
employed, not  merely  to  save  them  from  starvation,  but  to 
prevent  them  from  losing  established  habits  of  "order,  decency, 
and  cleanliness " ;  from  getting  their  feelings  vitiated,  their 
sensibilities  impaired,  so  that  they  were  in  danger  of  remain- 
ing content  with  a  worse  standard  of  living,  and  sinking  to  a 
lower  scale  in  the  dignity  of  social  and  civilized  being.  In  a 
word,  it  is  held  to  be  the  duty  of  the  State  to  prevent,  if  it  can, 
the  temporary  reverses  of  the  labouring  class  from  resulting  in 
its  permanent  moral  decadence ;  and  as  the  object  of  the  State's 
intervention  is  to  preserve  the  dignity,  the  self-respect,  the 
moral  independence  and  energy  of  the  labouring  class,  the 
manner  of  the  intervention,  the  choice  of  actual  means  and 
steps  for  administering  the  relief,  must,  of  course,  be  governed 
by  the  same  considerations.  "  The  true  secret  of  assisting  the 
poor,"  says  McCulloch,  borrowing  the  words  of  Archbishop 
Sumner,  "  is  to  make  them  agents  in  bettering  their  own  con- 
dition, and  to  supply  them,  not  with  a  temporary  stimulus,  but 
with  a  permanent  energy  "  (p.  475). 

The  same  principles  come  out  even  more  strongly  in  McCul- 
loch's  remarks  on  national  education.  He  says,  "  the  providing 
of  elementary  instruction  for  all  classes  is  one  of   the   most 


State  Socialism.  371 

pressing  duties  of  Government "  (p.  473) ;  and  the  elementary- 
instruction  he  would  provide  would  not  stop  at  reading  and 
writing,  but  would  include  even  a  knowledge  of  so  much 
political  economy  as  would  explain  "the  circumstances  which 
elevate  and  depress  the  rate  of  wages "  (p.  474).  It  was  the 
duty  of  Government  to  extirpate  ignorance,  because,  "  of  all 
obstacles  to  improvement,  ignorance  was  the  most  formidable"; 
and  it  was  its  duty  to  establish  Government  schools  for  the 
purpose,  because  charity  schools  impaired  the  self-respect  and 
sense  of  independence  which  were  themselves  first  essentials  of 
all  social  improvement. 

"No  extension  of  the  system  of  charity  and  subscription 
schools  can  ever  fully  compensate  for  the  want  of  a  statutory 
provision  for  the  education  of  the  public.  Something  of  degra- 
dation always  attaches  to  the  fact  of  one's  having  been  brought 
up  in  a  charity  school.  The  parents  who  send  children  to  such 
an  institution,  and  even  the  children,  know  that  they  have 
been  received  only  because  they  are  paupers  unable  to  pay  for 
their  education ;  and  this  consciousness  has  a  tendency  to 
weaken  that  state  of  independence  and  self-respect,  for  the 
want  of  which  the  best  education  may  be  but  an  imperfect 
substitute.  But  no  such  feeling  could  operate  on  the  pupils  of 
schools  established  hx  the  State  "  i  p.  476). 

There  is  no  question  with  McCulloch  about  the  right  of  the 
State  to  take  steps  to  forward  the  moral  progress,  or  to  prevent 
the  moral  decadence,  of  the  community — or  any  part  of  the 
community — under  its  care ;  that  is  simply  its  plain  and 
primary  duty,  though  there  may  be  question  with  the  State, 
as  with  other  agencies,  whether  particular  measures  proposed 
for  the  purpose  are  really  calculated  to  effect  it. 

After  this  long,  and  I  fear  tedious,  account  of  the  opinions 
of  McCulloch,  it  would  be  needless  to  call  more  witnesses  to 
refute  those  who  so  commonly  accuse  English  economists  of 
teaching  an  extreme  individualism.  For  McCulloch  may  be 
said  to  be  their  own  witness ;  they  hold  him  up  as  the  hardest 
and  narrowest  of  a  hard  and  narrow  school ;  one  of  the  ablest 
of  them,  Mr.  J.  K.  Ingram,  who  writes  McCulloch's  memoir 
in  the  Encijclopcedia  Britannica,  going  so  far  as  to  accuse  him 
of  exhibiting  "  a  habitual   deadness   in   the   study  of  social 


372  Contemporary  Socialism. 

questions  to  all  but  material  considerations."  "We  have  adduced 
enough  to  disprove  that  statement.  The  reader  of  McCulloch's 
Avritings  is  constantly  struck  to  observe  how  habitually  his 
judgment  of  a  social  question  is  governed  by  ethical  rather 
than  economic  considerations,  and  how  his  supreme  concern 
always  seems  to  be  to  guard  the  labouring  poor  from  falling 
into  any  sort  of  permanent  decadence,  and  to  place  them 
securely  on  the  lines  of  progressive  elevation.  But  perhaps  a 
word  may  be  required  about  the  Manchester  school.  Mr. 
Ingram  states — and  again  his  statement  probably  agrees  with 
current  prepossessions — that  McCulloch  occupied  '*  substanti- 
ally the  same  theoretic  position  as  was  occupied  at  a  somewhat 
later  period  by  the  Manchester  school"  {Encyc.  Brit.,  art. 
"  Political  Economy  ").  We  have  seen  what  McCulloch's  theo- 
retic position  really  was,  and  it  is  certainly  not  the  Manchester 
doctrine  of  popular  anathema ;  it  is  not  the  Mancliesterismus  of 
the  German  schools.  But  the  Manchester  men  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  have  properly  had  anything  in  the  nature  of  a 
general  theoretic  position.  They  were  not  a  school  of  political 
philosophy — they  were  a  band  of  practical  politicians  leagued 
to  promote  particular  reforms,  especially  two  reforms  in  inter- 
national policy  which  involved  large  curtailments  of  the  rdle 
of  Government — viz.,  free  trade  with  other  countries,  and  non- 
intervention in  their  internal  affairs ;  but  they  were  far  from 
thinking  that,  because  it  would  be  well  for  the  State  to  abstain 
from  certain  specific  interferences,  it  would  be  well  for  it  to 
abstain  from  all ;  or  that  if  the  State  had  no  civilizing  mission 
towards  the  people  of  other  countries,  it  had  therefore  no 
civilizing  mission  towards  its  own.  Cobden,  for  example — to 
go  no  farther — was  a  lifelong  advocate  of  a  national  s^'stem 
of  education ;  he  was  a  friend  of  factory  legislation  for  women 
and  children,  and,  with  respect  to  the  poor,  he  taught  in  one 
of  his  speeches  the  semi-socialistic  doctrine  that  the  poor  had 
the  first  right  to  maintenance  from  the  land — that  they  are, 
as  it  were,  the  first  mortgagees.  The  Manchester  school  is 
really  nothing  but  a  stage  convention,  a  convenient  polemical 
device  for  marking  off  a  particular  theoretical  extreme  regard- 
ing the  task  of  the  State ;  but  the  persons  in  actual  life  who 
were  presumed  to  compose  the  school  were  no   more,  all  of 


State  Socialism.  373 

them,  adherents  of  that  theory  than  Scotchmen,  off  the  stage, 
have  all  short  kilts  and  red  hair.  And  as  for  that  theory  itself, 
the  theory  or  laUsez-faire^  it  has  never  in  England  been  really 
anything  more  than  it  is  now,  the  plea  of  alarmed  vested 
interests  stealing  an  unwarranted,  and  I  believe  an  unwel- 
come, shelter  under  the  segis  of  economic  science.  English 
economists,  from  Smith  to  McCuUoch,  irom  McCulloch  to  Mr, 
Sidgwick,  have  adhered  with  a  truly  remarkable  steadiness  to 
a  social  doctrine  of  a  precisely  contrary  character — a  social 
doctrine  which,  instead  of  exhibiting  any  unreasonable  aversion 
to  Government  interference,  expressly  assigns  to  Government 
a  just  and  proper  place  in  promoting  the  social  and  industrial 
development  of  the  community.  In  the  first  place,  in  the 
department  of  production,  they  freely  allow  that  just  as  there 
are  many  industrial  enterprises  in  the  conduct  of  which  indi- 
vidual initiative  must,  for  want  of  resources  or  other  reasons, 
yield  to  joint-stock  companies,  so  there  are  others  for  which 
individuals  and  companies  alike  must  give  place  to  the  State, 
because  the  State  is  by  nature  or  circumstances  better  fitted 
than  either  to  conduct  them  satisfactorily ;  and  in  the  next 
place,  in  the  department  of  distribution,  while  rating  the 
moral  or  personal  independence  of  the  individual  as  a  supreme 
blessing  and  claim,  they  have  no  scruple  in  calling  on  the 
State  to  interfere  with  the  natural  liberty  of  contract  between 
man  and  man,  wherever  such  interference  seems  requisite  to 
secure  just  and  equitable  dealing,  to  guard  that  personal  inde- 
pendence itself  from  being  sapped,  or  to  establish  the  people 
better  in  any  of  the  other  elementary  conditions  of  all  humane 
living.  We  sometimes  take  pride  at  the  present  day  in  pro- 
fessing a  distrust  for  doctrinaire  or  metaphysical  politics,  and 
we  are  no  doubt  right ;  but  that  reproach  cannot  justly  be 
levelled  against  the  English  economists.  They  were  not  Dutch 
gardeners  trying  to  dress  the  world  after  an  artificial  scheme  ; 
that  is  more  distinctive  of  the  social  systems  they  opposed. 
Their  own  system  indeed  was  to  study. Nature,  to  discover  the 
principles  of  sound  natural  social  growth,  and  to  follow  them  ; 
but  they  had  no  idea  on  that  account  of  leaving  things  to 
grow  merely  as  thej^  would,  or  of  renouncing  the  help  of  good 
husbandry.     They  had,  as  we  have  seen,  a  positive  doctrine  of 


374  Contemporary  Socialism, 

social  politics,  whicli  required  from  the  State  much  more  than 
the  protection  of  liberty  and  the  repression  of  crime ;  they 
asked  the  State  to  undertake  such  industrial  work  as  it  was 
naturally  better  fitted  to  perform  than  individuals  or  associa- 
tions of  individuals,  and  they  asked  the  State  to  secure  to 
the  body  of  the  citizens  the  essential  conditions  of  a  normal 
and  progressive  manhood. 

Now  this  doctrine — which  may  be  called  the  English  doc- 
trine of  social  politics — seems  to  furnish  a  basis  of  considerable 
practical  value  for  discriminating  between  a  wholesome  and 
effective  participation  by  Government  in  the  work  of  social 
reform,  on  the  one  hand,  and  those  pernicious  and  dangerous 
forms  of  intervention  on  the  other,  which  may  be  correctly 
known  by  the  name  of  State  socialism. 

II.  The  Nature  and  Principle  of  State  Socialism. 

Few  words  are  at  present  more  wantonly  abused  than  the 
words  socialism  and  State  socialism.  They  are  tossed  about 
at  random,  as  if  their  meaning,  as  was  said  of  the  spelling  of 
former  generations,  was  a  mere  affair  of  private  judgment. 
There  is,  in  truth,  a  great  deal  of  socialism  in  the  employment 
of  the  word ;  little  respect  is  paid  to  the  previous  appropriation 
of  it ;  and  especially  since  it  has  become,  as  has  been  said, 
hoffahig^  men  press  forward  from  the  most  unlikely  quarters, 
claim  kindred  with  the  socialists,  and  strive  for  the  honour  of 
being  called  by  their  name.  Many  excellent  persons,  for  ex- 
ample, have  no  better  pretext  to  advance  for  their  claim  than 
that  they  also  feel  a  warm  sentiment  of  interest  in  the  cause 
of  the  poor.  Churchmen  whose  duties  bring  them  among  the 
poor  are  very  naturally  touched  with  a  sense  of  the  miseries 
they  observe,  and  certain  of  them,  who  may  perhaps  without 
offence  be  said  to  love  the  cause  weU  more  than  wisely,  come 
to  public  platforms  and  declare  themselves  socialists — socialists, 
they  will  sometimes  explain,  of  an  older  and  purer  confession 
than  the  Social  Democratic  Federation,  but  still  good  and 
genuine  socialists — merely  because  the  religion  they  preach  is 
a  gospel  of  moral  equality  before  God,  and  of  fraternal  responsi- 
biUty  among  men,  whose  very  test  in  the  end  is  the  test  of 


State  Socialism.  375 

human  kindness — "  Inasmuch  as  3-e  did  it  not  to  one  of  the 
least  of  these  My  brethren,  ye  did  it  not  to  Me."  But  socialism 
is  not  a  feeling  for  the  poor,  nor  yet  for  the  responsibilities  of 
society  in  connection  with  their  poverty ;  it  is  neither  what 
is  called  humanitarianism,  nor  what  is  called  altruism  ;  it  is 
not  an  affair  of  feeling  at  all,  but  of  organization,  and  the 
feeling  it  breathes  may  not  be  altruistic.  The  revolutionary 
socialists  of  the  Continent,  for  instance,  are  animated  by  as 
vigorous  a  spirit  of  self-interest  and  an  even  more  bitter  class 
antagonism  than  a  trade  union  or  a  land  league.  They  fight 
for  a  particular  claim  of  right — the  utterly  unjustifiable  claim 
to  the  whole  product  of  labour— and  they  propose  to  turn  the 
world  upside  down  by  a  vast  scheme  of  social  reconstruction 
in  order  to  get  their  unjust,  delusive,  and  mischievous  idea 
realized.  The  gauge  of  their  socialism,  therefore,  must,  after 
all,  be  looked  for  in  their  claim  and  their  remedy,  and  not  in 
the  vague  sympathies  of  a  benevolent  spectator  who,  without 
scrutinizing  either  the  one  or  the  other,  thinks  he  will  call 
himself  a  socialist  because  he  feels  that  there  is  much  in  the 
lot  of  the  poor  man  that  might  be  mended,  and  that  the  rich 
might  be  very  properly  and  reasonably  asked  to  make  some 
sacrifices  for  their  brethren's  sake  out  of  their  abundance.  The 
philanthropic  spectator  suffers-  from  no  scarcity  of  words  to 
express  his  particular  attitude  if  he  desires  to  do  so ;  why  then 
should  he  not  leave  sociahsts  the  enjoyment  of  their  vocable  ? 

There  is  often  at  the  bottom  of  this  sentimental  patronage 
of  socialism  the  not  unchivalrous  but  mistaken  idea  that  the 
ordinary  self-interest  of  the  world  has  been  glorified  by  econo- 
mists into  a  sacred  and  all-sufficing  principle  which  it  would 
be  interfering  with  the  designs  of  Providence  to  restrict,  and 
that  therefore  it  is  only  right  to  side  with  socialism  as  a  protest 
against  the  position  taken  by  the  apologists  of  the  present 
system  of  things,  without  being  understood  to  commit  one's  self 
thereby  to  the  particular  system  which  socialism  may  propose 
to  put  in  its  place.  But  while  the  economists  think  very  rightly 
that  self-interest  must  always  be  regarded  as  the  ordinary 
guide  of  life,  and  that  the  world  cannot  be  reasonably  expected 
to  become  either  better,  or  better  off,  if  everybody  were  to  look 
after  other  people's  interests  (which  he  knows  nothing  about) 


37^  Contemporary  Socialism. 

instead  of  looking  after  his  own  (of  whicli  he  at  least  knows 
something),  they  are  far  from  showing  any  indifference  to  the 
danger  of  self-interest  running  into  selfishness.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  have  constantly  insisted — as  the  evidence  I  have 
already  produced  abundantly  proves — that  where  the  self- 
interest  of  the  strongly  placed  failed  to  subject  itself  spon- 
taneously to  the  restraints  of  social  justice  and  the  responsibihties 
of  our  common  humanity,  it  was  for  society  to  step  in  and 
impose  the  restraints  that  were  just  and  requisite,  and  to  do 
so  either  by  pubUc  opinion  or  by  pubUc  authority  in  the  way 
most  likely  to  be  practicable  and  effectual.  Another  tiling  our 
sentimental  friends  forget  is  that  the  socialists  of  the  present 
day  have  no  thought  of  substituting  any  other  general  economic 
motive  in  the  room  of  self-interest.  If  they  had  their  schemes 
realized  to-morrow,  men  would  still  be  paid  according  to  the 
amount  of  their  individual  work,  and  each  would  work  so  far 
for  his  own  hand.  His  daily  motive  would  be  his  individual 
interest,  though  his  scope  of  achievement  would  be  severely 
limited  by  law  with  the  view  of  securing  a  better  general  level 
of  happiness  in  the  community.  The  question  between  econo- 
mists and  socialists  is  not  whether  the  claims  of  social  justice 
are  entitled  to  be  respected,  but  whether  the  claims  which  one 
or  other  of  them  make  really  are  claims  of  social  justice  or  no. 
Still,  so  firm  is  the  hold  taken  by  the  notion  that  the  socialists 
are  the  special  champions  of  social  justice,  that  one  of  our  most 
respected  prelates  has  actually  defined  socialism  in  that  sense. 
The  Bishop  of  Eochester  (now  of  Winchester),  in  his  Pastoral 
Letter  to  his  Clergy  at  the  new  year  of  1888,  takes  occasion, 
while  warning  the  younger  brethren  against  the  too  headlong 
philantliropy  which  "  scouts  what  is  known  as  the  science  of 
political  economy,"  to  describe  socialism  as  "  the  science  of 
maintaining  the  right  proportion  of  equity  and  kindness  while 
adjudicating  the  various  claims  which  individuals  and  society 
mutually  make  upon  each  other."  In  reality,  socialism  would 
be  better  defined  as  a  system  that  outsteps  the  right  proportion 
of  equity  and  kindness,  and  sets  up  for  the  masses  claims  that 
are  devoid  of  proportion  and  measure  of  any  kind,  and  whose 
injustice  and  peril  often  arise  from  that  very  circumstance. 
If  bishops  carry  the  term  off  to  one  quarter,  philosophers 


State  Socialism.  ^ill 

carry  it  to  another.  Some  identify  socialism  -witli  the  associa- 
tive principle  generally,  and  see  it  manifested  in  the  growth 
of  one  form  of  organization  as  much  as  in  the  growth  of  an- 
other, or  at  most  they  may  limit  it  to  the  intervention  of  the 
associative  principle  in  things  industrial,  and  in  that  event  they 
would  consider  a  joint-stock  company,  or  a  co-operative  store, 
or  perhaps  a  building  like  Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  or  the 
common-stair  system  of  Scotland,  to  be  as  genuine  exhibitions 
of  socialism  as  the  collectivism  or  anarchism  of  the  Continental 
factions  or  the  State  monopolies  of  Prince  Bismarck.  But  a 
joint-stock  company  is  no  departure  from — it  is  rather  an  exten- 
sion of — the  present  regime  of  private  property,  free  competition, 
and  self-interest;  and  why  should  it  be  described  by  the  same 
name  as  a  system  whose  chief  pretension  is  to  supersede  that 
regime  by  a  better?  Another  very  common  definition  of 
socialism — perhaps  the  most  common  of  all,  and  the  last  to 
which  I  shall  refer  here — is  that  socialism  is  the  general  prin- 
ciple of  giving  society  the  greatest  possible  control  over  the 
life  of  the  individual,  in  contradistinction  to  the  opposite  prin- 
ciple of  individualism,  which  is  taken  to  be  the  principle  of 
giving  the  individual  the  greatest  possible  immunity  from  the 
control  of  society.  Any  extension  of  the  authority  of  the  State, 
any  fresh  regulation  of  the  transactions  of  individual  citizens, 
is  often  pronounced  to  be  socialistic  without  asking  what  the 
object  or  nature  of  the  regulations  may  be.  Socialism  is  iden- 
tified with  any  enlargement,  and  individualism  with  any  con- 
traction, of  the  functions  of  government.  But  the  world  has 
not  been  made  on  this  socialist  principle  alone,  nor  on  this 
individualist  principle  alone,  and  it  can  neither  be  explained 
nor  amended  by  means  of  the  one  without  the  other.  Abstrac- 
tions of  that  order  afford  us  little  practical  guidance.  The 
socialists  of  real  life  are  not  men  who  are  bent  on  increasing 
Government  control  for  the  mere  sake  of  increasing  Govern- 
ment control.  There  are  broad  tracts  of  the  individual's  life 
they  would  leave  free  from  social  control ;  they  would  give 
him,  for  example,  full  property  in  his  house  and  furniture 
during  his  lifetime,  and  the  right  to  spend  his  income,  once  he 
had  earned  it,  in  his  own  way.  Their  scheme,  if  carried  out, 
might  be  found  to  compel  them  to  restrict  this  latter  right, 


^yS  Co7ite7nporary  Socialism. 

but  their  own  desire  and  belief  undoubtedly  is  that  the  indi- 
vidual would  have  more  freedom  of  the  kind  then  than  he  has 
now.  They  seek  to  extend  Government  control  only  because, 
and  only  so  far  as,  they  believe  Government  control  to  be 
necessary  and  fitted  to  realize  certain  theories  of  right  and 
well-being  which  they  think  it  incumbent  on  organized  society 
to  realize;  and  consequently  the  thing  that  properly  char- 
acterizes their  position  is  not  so  much  the  degree  of  their  con- 
fidence in  the  powers  of  the  State  as  the  nature  of  the  theories 
of  right  for  which  they  invoke  its  intervention.  And  just  as 
socialists  do  not  enlarge  the  iDOunds  of  authority  from  the  mere 
love  of  authority,  so  their  opponents  do  not  resist  the  enlarge- 
ment from  the  mere  hatred  of  authority.  They  raise  no 
controversy  about  the  abstract  legitimac^T-  of  Government 
encroachments  on  the  sphere  of  private  capital  or  of  legal 
enlargements  of  the  rights  or  privileges  of  labour.  There  is 
no  socialism  in  that ;  the  socialism  only  comes  in  when  the 
encroachments  are  made  on  a  field  where  Government  adminis- 
tration is  unlikely  to  answer,  and  where  the  rights  conferred 
are  rights  to  which  labour  can  present  no  just  and  reasonable 
claim. 

It  will  be  objected  that  this  is  to  reduce  socialism  to  a  mere 
matter  of  more  or  less.  The  English  economists,  it  will  be 
said,  practised  a  little  socialism,  because  they  allowed  the  use 
of  State  means  to  elevate  the  condition  of  the  working  classes, 
or  to  provide  for  the  wants  of  the  general  community  ;  and  the 
Continental  Social  Democrats  only  practise  a  little  more  social- 
ism when  they  cry  for  a  working-class  State  or  for  the  progres- 
sive nationalization  of  all  industries.  But  in  practical  life  the 
measure  is  everything.  So  many  grains  of  opium  will  cure ;  so 
many  more  will  kill.  The  important  thing  for  adjusting  claims 
must  always  be  to  get  the  right  measure,  and  the  objection  to 
socialistic  schemes  is  precisely  this,  that  they  take  up  a  theory 
of  distributive  justice  which  is  an  absolutely  wrong  measure, 
or  else  some  vague  theory  of  disinheritance  which  contains  no 
measure  at  all.  They  would  nationalize  industries  without 
paying  any  respect  to  their  suitability  for  Government  man- 
agement, simply  because  they  want  to  see  all  industries  nation- 
alized ;    and  they  would  grant  all   manner  of   compensating 


State  Socialism.  379 

advantages  to  the  working  class  as  instalments  of  some  vague 
claim,  eitlier  of  economic  rigkt  from  wliicli  they  are  alleged  to 
have  been  ousted  by  the  system  of  capitalism,  or  of  aboriginal 
natural  right  from  which  they  are  said  to  have  been  disin- 
herited by  the  general  arrangements  of  society  itself.  "What 
distinguishes  their  position  and  makes  it  socialism  is  therefore 
precisely  this  absence  of  measure  or  of  the  right  measure,  and 
one  great  advantage  of  the  English  doctrine  of  social  politics 
which  I  have  expounded,  is  that  it  is  able  to  supply  this 
indispensable  criterion.  That  doctrine  would  limit  the  in- 
dustrial undertakings  of  the  State  to  such  as  it  possessed 
natural  advantages  for  conducting  successfully,  and  the  State's 
part  in  social  reform  to  securing  for  the  people  the  essential 
conditions  of  all  humane  living,  of  all  normal  and  progressive 
manhood.  It  would  interfere,  indeed,  as  little  as  possible  with 
liberty  of  speculation,  because  it  recognises  that  the  best  way 
of  promoting  social  progress  and  prosperity  is  to  multiply  the 
opportunities,  and  with  the  opportunities  the  incentives,  of 
talent  and  capital ;  but,  while  giving  the  strong  their  head,  in 
the  behef  that  they  will  carry  on  the  world  so  far  after  them, 
it  would  insist  on  the  public  authority  taking  sharp  heed  that 
no  large  section  of  the  common  people  be  suffered  to  fall  per- 
manently behind  in  the  race,  to  lose  the  very  conditions  of 
further  progress,  and  to  lapse  into  ways  of  living  which  the 
opinion  of  the  time  thinks  unworthy  of  our  common  humanity. 
Now  State  socialism  disregards  these  limits,  straying  generally 
far  bej'ond  them,  and  it  may  not  improperly  be  defined  as  the 
system  which  requires  the  State  to  do  work  it  is  unfit  to  do  in 
order  to  invest  the  working  classes  with  privileges  they  have 
no  right  to  get. 

The  term  State  socialism  originated  in  Germany  a  few  years 
ago  to  express  the  antithesis  not  of  free,  voluntary,  or  Christian 
socialism,  as  seems  frequently  to  be  imagined  here,  but  of 
revolutionary  socialism,  which  is  always  considered  to  be  social- 
ism proper,  because  it  is  the  only  form  of  the  system  that  is  of 
any  serious  moment  at  the  present  day.  State  socialism  has 
the  same  general  aims  as  socialism  proper,  only  it  wotild  carry 
out  its  plans  gradually  by  means  of  the  existing  State,  instead 
of  first  overtu;ning  the  existing  State  by  revolution  and  estab- 


380  Contemporary  Socialism. 

lishing  in  its  place  a  new  political  organization  for  the  purpose, 
tlie  Social  Democratic  Republic.  There  are  socialists  who 
fancy  they  have  but  at  any  moment  to  choose  a  government 
and  issue  a  decree,  as  Napoleon  once  did — "  Let  misery  be 
abolished  this  day  fortnight" — and  misery  would  be  abolished 
that  day  fortnight.  But  the  State  socialists  are  unable  to 
share  this  simple  faith.  They  are  Stats  socialists  not  be- 
cause they  have  more  confidence  in  the  State  than  other 
socialists,  but  because  they  have  less.  They  consider  it  utterly 
futile  to  expect  a  democratic  community  ever  to  be  able  to 
create  a  political  executive  that  should  be  powerful  enough,  to 
carry  through  the  entire  socialistic  programme.  Like  the  Social 
Conservatives  of  all  countries,  like  our  own  Young  England 
party,  for  example,  or  the  Tory  Democrats  of  the  present  gene- 
ration, they  combine  a  warm  zeal  for  popular  amelioration  with 
a  profound  distrust  of  popular  government ;  but  when  compared 
with  other  socialists,  they  take  a  very  sober  view  of  the  capacity 
of  government  of  any  kind  ;  and  although  they  believe  impli- 
citly in  the  '^  Social  Monarchy  of  the  Hohenzollerns,"  they  doubt 
whether  the  strongest  monarchy  the  world  has  ever  seen  would 
be  strong  enough  to  effect  a  socialistic  reconstruction  of  the 
industrial  sj'^stem  without  retaining  the  existence  for  many 
centuries  to  come  of  the  ancient  institutions  of  private  pro- 
perty and  inheritance. 

All  that  is  at  least  very  frankly  acknowledged  by  Rodbertus, 
the  remarkable  but  overrated  thinker  whom  the  State  social- 
ists of  Germany  have  chosen  for  their  father.  Rodbertus  was 
always  regarded  as  a  great  oracle  by  Lassalle,  the  originator  of 
the  present  socialist  agitation,  and  his  authority  is  constantly 
quoted  by  the  most  eminent  luminary  among  the  State  social- 
ists of  these  latter  days,  Professor  Adolph  Wagner,  who  says 
it  was  Rodbertus  that  first  shed  on  him  "  the  Damascus  light 
that  tore  from  his  eyes  the  scales  of  economic  individualism." 
Rodbertus  had  lived  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  a  political 
sulk  against  the  Hohenzollerns.  Though  he  had  served  as  a 
Minister  of  State,  he  threw  up  his  political  career  rather  than 
accept  a  constitution  as  a  mere  royal  favour  ;  he  refused  to 
work  under  it  or  recognise  it  b}^  so  much  as  a  vote  at  the  polls. 
But  when  the  power  of  the  Hohenzollerns  became  established 


State  Socialism.  ^8i 


o' 


by  the  victories  of  Koniggratz  and  Sedan,  and  when  they 
embarked  on  their  new  policy  of  State  socialism,  Rodbertus 
developed  into  one  of  their  most  ardent  worshippers.  Their 
new  social  policy,  it  is  true,  was  avowedly  adopted  as  a  corrective 
of  socialism,  as  a  kind  of  inoculation  with  a  milder  type  of  the 
disease  in  order  to  procure  immunity  from  a  more  malignant ; 
but  Bismarck  contended  at  the  same  time  that  it  was  nothing 
but  the  old  traditional  policy  of  the  House  of  Prussia,  who  had 
long  before  placed  the  right  of  existence  and  the  right  of  labour 
in  the  statute-book  of  the  country,  and  whose  most  illustrious 
member,  Frederick  the  Great,  used  to  be  fond  of  calling  himself 
"  the  beggars'  king."  Under  these  circumstances  Rodbertus 
came  to  place  the  whole  hope  of  the  future  in  the  "  Social  Mon- 
archy of  the  Hohenzollerns,"  and  ventured  to  prophesy  that  a 
socialist  emperor  would  yet  be  born  to  that  House  who  would 
rule  possibly  with  a  rod  of  iron,  but  would  always  rule  for  the 
greatest  good  of  the  labouring  class.  Still,  even  under  a 
dynasty  of  socialist  emperors  Rodbertus  gave  five  hundred 
years  for  the  completion  of  the  economic  revolution  he  contem- 
plated, because  he  acknowledged  it  would  take  all  that  time 
for  society  to  acquire  the  moral  principle  and  habitual  firmness 
of  will  which  would  alone  enable  it  to  dispense  with  the  insti- 
tutions of  private  property  and  inheritance  without  suffering 
serious  injury. 

In  theory  Rodbertus  was  a  believer  in  the  modern  social 
democratic  doctrine  of  the  labourer's  right  to  the  full  product 
of  his  labour— the  doctrine  which  gives  itself  out  as  "  scientific 
socialism,"  because  it  is  got  by  combining  a  misunderstanding 
of  Ricardo's  theory  of  wages  with  a  misunderstanding  of  the 
same  economist's  theory  of  value — and  which  would  abolish 
rent,  interest,  profit,  and  all  forms  of  "labourless  income," 
and  give  the  entire  gross  product  to  the  labourer,  because  by 
that  union  of  scientific  blunders  it  is  made  to  appear  that  the 
laboui'er  has  produced  the  whole  product  himself.  Rodbertus, 
in  fact,  claimed  to  be  the  author  of  that  doctrine,  and  fought 
for  the  priority  with  Marx,  though  in  reality  the  English 
socialists  had  drawn  the  same  conclusions  from  the  same  blun- 
ders long  before  either  of  them  ;  but  author  or  no  author  of  it, 
his  sole  reason  for  touchinor  the  work  of  social  reform  at  all 


382  Contemporary  Socialism. 

was  to  get  that  particular  claim  of  right  recognised.  Yet  for 
five  hundred  years  Rodbertus  will  not  wrong  the  labourers  by 
granting  them  their  full  rights.  He  admits  that  without  the 
assistance  of  the  private  capitalist  during  that  interval  labour- 
ers would  not  produce  so  much  work,  and  therefore  could  not 
earn  so  much  wages  as  they  do  now ;  and  consequently,  in  spite 
of  his  theories,  he  declines  to  suppress  rent  and  interest  in  the 
meantime,  and  practically  tells  the  labourers  they  must  wait 
for  the  full  product  of  labour  till  the  time  comes  when  they 
can  produce  the  full  product  themselves.  That  is  virtually  to 
confess  that  while  the  claim  may  be  just  then,  it  is  unjust 
now;  and  although  Rodbertus  never  makes  that  acknowledg- 
ment, he  is  content  to  leave  the  claim  in  abeyance  and  to  put 
forward  in  its  place,  as  a  provisional  ideal  of  just  distribution 
more  conformable  to  the  present  situation  of  things,  the  claim 
of  the  labourer  to  a  progressive  share,  step  for  step  with  the 
capitalist,  in  the  results  of  the  increasing  productivity  given 
to  labour  by  inventions  and  machinery.  He  thought  that  at 
present,  so  far  from  getting  the  whole  product  of  labour,  the 
labourer  was  getting  a  less  and  less  share  of  its  products  every 
day,  and  though  this  can  be  easily  shown  to  be  a  delusive  fear, 
Eodbertus's  State  socialism  was  devised  to  counteract  it. 

For  this  purpose  the  first  requisite  was  the  systematic  man- 
agement of  all  industries  by  the  State.  The  final  goal  was  to 
be  State  property  as  well  as  State  management,  but  for  the 
greater  part  of  five  centuries  the  system  would  be  private 
property  and  State  management.  Sir  Rowland  Hill  and  the 
English  railway  nationalizers  proposed  that  the  State  should 
own  the  lines,  but  that  the  companies  should  continue  to  work 
them ;  E-odbertus's  idea,  on  the  contrary,  is  that  the  State 
should  work,  but  not  own.  But  then  the  State  should  manage 
everything  and  everywhere.  Co-operation  and  joint-stock 
management  were  as  objectionable  to  him  as  individual  man- 
agement. He  thought  it  a  mere  delusion  to  suppose,  as  some 
socialists  did,  that  the  growth  of  joint-stock  companies  and 
co-operative  societies  is  a  step  in  historical  evolution  towards 
a  socialist  regime.  It  was  just  the  opposite  ;  it  was  individual 
property  in  a  worse  fyrm,  and  he  always  told  his  friend  Lassalle 
that  it  was  a  hopeless  dream  to  expect  to  bring  in  the  reign 


State  Socialism.  383 

of  justice  and  brotherhood  by  his  plan  of  founding  productive 
associations  on  State  credit,  because  productive  societies  really 
led  the  other  way,  and  created  batches  of  joint-stock  property, 
which  he  said  would  make  itself  a  thousand  times  more  bit- 
terly hated  than  the  individual  property  of  to-day.  One 
association  would  compete  with  another,  and  the  group  on  a 
rich  mine  would  use  their  advantage  over  the  group  on  a  poor 
one  as  mercilessly  as  private  capitalists  do  now.  ^  Nothing 
would  answer  the  end  but  State  property,  and  nothing  would 
conduce  to  State  property  but  State  management. 

The  object  of  all  this  intervention,  as  we  have  said,  is  to 
realize  a  certain  ideal  or  standard  of  fair  wages — the  standard 
according  to  which  a  fair  wage  is  one  that  grows  step  by  step 
with  the  productive  capacity  of  the  country ;  and  the  plan 
Rodbertus  proposes  to  realize  it  by  is  practically  a  scheme  of 
compulsory  profit-sharing.  He  would  convert  all  land  and 
capital  into  an  irredeemable  national  stock,  of  which  the 
present  owners  would  be  constituted  the  first  or  original 
holders,  which  they  might  sell  or  transfer  at  pleasure  but  not 
call  up,  and  on  which  they  should  receive,  not  a  fixed  rent  or 
rate  of  interest,  but  an  annual  dividend  var^^ing  with  the  pro- 
duce or  profits  of  the  year.  The  produce  of  the  year  was  to  be 
divided  into  three  parts :  one  for  the  landowners,  to  be  shared 
according  to  the  amount  of  stock  they  respectively  held ;  a 
second  for  the  capitalists,  to  be  shared  in  the  same  way  ;  and 
the  third  for  the  labourers,  to  be  shared  by  them  according  to 
the  quantity  of  work  they  did,  measured  by  the  time  occupied 
and  the  relative  strain  of  their  several  trades.  This  division 
was  necessarily  very  arbitrary  in  its  nature ;  there  was  no 
principle  whatever  to  decide  how  much  should  go  to  the  land- 
owners, and  how  much  to  capitalists,  and  how  much  to 
labourers  ;  and  although  there  was  a  rule  for  settling  the  price 
cf  labour  in  one  trade  as  compared  with  the  price  of  labour  in 
another,  it  is  a  rule  that  would  afford  very  little  practical 
guidance  if  one  came  to  apply  it  in  actual  life.  At  all  events, 
Rodbertus  himself  toiled  for  years  at  a  working  plan  for  his 
scheme  of  wages,  but  though  he  always  gave  out  that  he  had 
succeeded  in  preparing  one,  he  steadily  refused  to  disclose  it 
even  to  trusted  admirers  like  Lassa-le  and  Rudolph  Meyer,  on 


384  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  singular  pretext  tliat  the  world  knew  too  little  political 
economy  as  yet  to  receive  it,  and  at  his  death  nothing  of  the 
sort  seems  to  have  been  discovered  among  his  papers.  Is  it 
doing  him  any  injustice  to  infer  that  he  had  never  been  able 
to  arrive  at  a  plan  that  satisfied  his  own  mind  as  to  its  being 
neither  arbitrary  nor  impracticable  ? 

Now  this  is  a  good  specimen  of  State  socialism,  because  it 
is  so  complete  and  brings  out  so  decisively  the  broad  char- 
acteristics of  the  system.  In  the  first  place,  it  desires  a  pro- 
gressive and  indiscriminate  nationalization  of  all  industries, 
not  because  it  thinks  they  will  be  more  efficiently  or  more 
economically  managed  in  consequence  of  the  change,  but 
merely  as  a  preliminary  step  towards  a  particular  scheme  of 
social  reform ;  in  the  next  place,  that  scheme  of  social  reform 
is  an  ideal  of  equitable  distribution  which  is  demonstrably 
false,  and  is  admittedly  incapable  of  immediate  realization ;  in 
the  third  place,  a  provisional  policy  is  adopted  in  the  mean- 
while by  pitching  arbitrarily  on  a  certain  measure  of  privileges 
and  advantages  that  are  to  be  guaranteed  to  the  labouring 
classes  by  law  as  partial  instalments  of  rights  deferred  or  com- 
pensations for  rights  alleged  to  be  taken  away. 

It  may  be  that  not  many  State  socialists  are  so  thorough- 
going as  Rodbertus.  Few  of  them  possibly  accept  his  theory 
of  the  labourer's  right — which  is  virtually  that  the  labourer 
has  a  right  to  everything,  all  existing  wealth  being  considered 
merely  an  accumulation  of  unpaid  labour — and  few  of  them 
may  '  throw  so  heavy  a  burden  on  the  State  as  the  whole 
production  and  the  whole  distribution  of  the  country.  But 
they  all  start  from  some  theory  of  right  that  is  just  as  false, 
and  they  all  impose  work  on  the  State  which  the  State  cannot 
creditably  perform.  They  all  think  of  the  mass  of  mankind  as 
being  disinherited  in  one  way  or  another  by  the  present  social 
system,  perhaps  through  the  permission  of  private  property 
at  all,  perhaps  through  permission  of  its  inequalities.  M.  de 
Laveleye,  indeed,  goes  a  step  further  back  still.  In  an  article 
he  has  contributed  on  this  subject  to  the  Contemporary  Review, 
he  uses  as  his  motto  the  saying  of  M.  Renan  that  Nature  is  in- 
justice itself,  and  he  would  have  society  to  correct  not  merely 
the  inequalities  which  society  may  have  itself  had  a  share  in 


State  Socialism.  385 

establisliiug,  but  also  the  inequalities  of  talent  or  opportunity 
whicli  are  Nature's  own  work.  Accordingly,  M.  de  Laveleye 
describes  himself  as  a  State  socialist,  because  he  thinks  "  the 
State  ought  to  make  use  of  its  legitimate  powers  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  equality  of  conditions  among  men  in  proportion 
to  their  personal  merit."  Equality  of  conditions  and  personal 
merit  are  inconsistent  standards,  but  if  they  were  harmonious, 
it  would  be  beyond  the  power  of  the  State  to  realize  them  for 
want  of  an  effective  calculus  of  either. 

Few  State  socialists,  however,  profess  the  purpose  of  correct- 
ing the  differences  of  native  endowment ;  for  the  most  part, 
when  they  found  their  policy  on  any  theoretic  idea  at  all,  they 
found  it  on  some  idea  of  historical  reparation.  In  this  country, 
socialist  notions  always  crop  up  out  of  the  land.  German 
socialists  direct  their  attack  mainly  on  capital,  but  English 
socialism  fastens  very  naturally  on  property  in  land,  which  in 
England  is  concentrated  into  unnaturally  few  hands :  and  a 
'claim  is  very  commonly  advanced  for  more  or  less  indefinite 
compensation  to  the  labouring  class  on  account  of  their  alleged 
disinheritance,  through  the  institution  of  private  property,  from 
their  aboriginal  or  natural  rights  to  the  use  of  the  earth,  the 
common  possession  of  the  race.  That  is  the  ground,  for 
example,  which  Mr.  Spencer  takes  for  advocating  land  nation- 
alization, and  Mr.  Chamberlain  for  his  various  claims  for 
"  ransom."  The  last-comer  is  held  to  have  as  good  a  right  to 
the  free  use  of  the  earth  as  the  first  occupant ;  and  if  society 
deprives  him  of  that  right  for  purposes  of  its  own,  he  is  main- 
tained to  be  entitled  to  receive  some  equivalent,  as  if  society 
does  not  already  give  the  new-comer  vastly  more  than  it  took 
away.  His  chances  of  obtaining  a  decent  living  in  the  world, 
instead  of  being  reduced,  have  been  immensely  multiplied 
through  the  social  system  that  has  resulted  from  the  private  ap- 
propriation of  land.  The  primitive  economic  rights  whose  loss 
socialists  make  the  subject  of  so  much  lamentation  are  gener- 
ally considered  to  be  these  four :  (1)  the  right  to  hunt ;  (2)  the 
right  to  fish  ;  (3)  the  right  to  gather  nuts  and  berries  ;  and  (4) 
the  right  to  feed  a  cow  or  sheep  on  the  waste  land.  Fourier 
added  a  fifth — which  was  certainly  a  right  much  utilized  in 
early  times — the  right  of  theft  from  people  over  the  border  of 

CO 


3S6  Contemporary  Socialisvt. 

the  territory  of  one's  own  tribe.  Let  that  right  be  thrown  in 
with  the  rest ;  then  the  claim  with  which  every  Enghsh  child 
is  alleged  to  be  born,  and  for  which  compensation  is  asked,  is 
the  claim  to  a  thirty-millionth  part  of  the  value  of  these  five 
aboriginal  uses  of  the  soil  of  England  ;  and  what  is  that  worth? 
"Why,  if  the  "prairie  value"  of  the  soil  is  estimated  at  the  high 
figure  of  a  shilling  the  acre  per  annum,  it  would  only  give 
every  inhabitant  something  under  half  a  crown,  and  when 
compensation  is  demanded  for  the  loss  of  this  ridiculous 
pittance,  one  calls  to  mind  what  immensely  greater  compensa- 
tions the  modern  child  is  born  to.  Civilization  is  itself  a  social 
property,  a  common  fund,  a  people's  heritage,  accumulating 
from  one  generation  to  another,  and  opening  to  the  new-comer 
economic'  opportunities  and  careers  incomparably  better  and 
more  numerous  than  the  ancient  liberties  of  fishing  in  the 
stream  or  nutting  in  the  forest.  The  things  actually  demanded 
for  the  poor  in  liquidation  of  this  alleged  claim  ma}'^  often  be 
admissible  on  other  grounds  altogether,  but  to  ask  them  in  the- 
name  of  compensation  for  the  loss  of  those  primitive  economic 
rights  —  even  though  it  was  done  by  Spencer  or  Cobden — 
is  certainly  State  socialism. 

Mr.  Chamberlain's  famous  "  ransom  "  speeches  are  an  example 
of  that.  There  was  nothing  socialist  about  the  substance  of  his 
proposals.  He  expressly  disclaimed  all  sympathy  with  the 
idea  of  equality  of  conditions ;  he  hesitated  about  applying  the 
graduated  taxation*  principle  to  anything  but  legacies ;  he 
explicitly  said  he  would  do  nothing  to  discourage  the  cumula- 
tive principle  in  the  rich,  or  the  habit  of  industry  in  the  poor ; 
he  asked  mainly  for  free  schools,  free  libraries,  free  parks,  and 
other  things  of  a  like  character ;  but  then  he  asked  for  them 
as  a  penalty  for  wrong-doing,  instead  of  an  obligation  of 
ability — as  a  ransom  to  be  paid  by  the  rich,  or  by  society 
generally,  for  having  ousted  the  poor  out  of  their  aboriginal 
rights.  Mr.  Chamberlain  merely  pled  for  useful  social  reforms 
in  a  socialistic  spirit. 

The  favourite  theory  on  which  the  German  State  socialists 
proceed  seems  to  be  that  men  are  entitled  to  an  equalization  of 
opportunities,  to  an  immunity,  as  far  as  human  power  can 
secure  it,  from  the  interposition  of  chance  and  change.     That 


State  Socialism.  387 

at  least  is  the  view  of  Professor  Adolpli  Wagner,  whose  position 
on  the  subject  is  of  considerable  consequence,  because  he  is  the 
economist-in-ordinary  to  the  German  Government,  and  has 
been  Prince  Bismarck's  principal  adviser  in  connection  with 
all  his  recent  social  legislation.  Professor  Wagner  may  be 
taken  as  the  most  eminent  and  most  authoritative  exponent 
of  the  theory  of  State  socialism,  and  he  recently  developed 
his  views  on  the  subject  afresh  in  some  articles  in  the  Tubin- 
gen Zeitsclirift  fur  die  Gesammfen  StaatsicissenscJiaften  for  1887, 
on  "  Finanz-politik  und  Staatsozialismus."  According  to 
Wagner,  the  chief  aim  of  the  State  at  present — in  taxation  and 
in  every  other  form  of  its  activity — ought  to  be  to  alter  the 
national  distribution  of  wealth  to  the  advantage  of  the  working 
class.  All  politics  must  become  social  politics  ;  the  State  must 
turn  workman's  friend.  For  we  have  aiTived  at  a  new  historical 
period  ;  and  just  as  the  feudal  period  gave  way  to  the  absolu- 
tist period,  and  the  absolutist  period  to  the  constitutional, 
so  now  the  constitutional  period  is  merging  in  what  ought 
to  be  called  the  social  period,  because  social  ideas  are  very 
properly  coming  more  and  more  to  influence  and  control  every- 
thing, alike  in  the  region  of  production,  in  the  region  of  distri- 
bution, and  in  the  region  of  consumption.  Now,  according 
to  Wagner,  the  business  of  the  State  socialist  is  simply  to 
facilitate  the  development  of  this  change — to  work  out  the 
transition  from  the  constitutional  to  the  social  epoch  in  the 
best,  wisest,  and  most  wholesome  way  for  all  parties  concerned. 
He  rejects  the  so-called  "  scientific  socialism  "  of  Marx  and 
Rodbertus  and  Lassalle,  and  the  practical  policy  of  the  social 
democratic  agitation ;  and  he  will  not  believe  either  that  a 
false  theory  Uke  theirs  can  obtain  a  lasting  influence,  or  that  a 
party  that  builds  itself  on  such  a  theory  can  ever  become  a 
real  power.  But,  at  the  same  time,  he  cannot  set  down  the 
socialistic  theory  as  a  mere  philosophical  speculation,  or  the 
socialistic  movement  as  merely  an  artificial  product  of  agita- 
tion. The  evils  of  both  lie  in  the  actual  situation  of  things ; 
they  are  products — necessary  products,  he  says — of  our  modern 
social  development ;  and  they  will  never  be  effectually  quieted 
till  that  development  is  put  on  more  salutary  lines.  They 
have  a  soul  of  truth  in  them,  and  that  soul  of  truth  in  the 


388  Contemporary  Socialism. 

doctrines  and  demands  of  radical  socialism  is  what  State 
socialism  seeks  to  disengage,  to  formulate,  to  realize.  It  is 
quite  true,  for  example,  that  the  present  distribution  of  wealth, 
with  its  starthng  inequalities  of  accumulation  and  want,  is 
historically  the  effect,  first,  of  class  legislation  and  class  ad- 
ministration of  law  ;  and  second,  of  mere  blind  chance  operat- 
ing on  a  legal  regime  of  private  property  and  industrial 
freedom,  and  a  state  of  the  arts  which  gave  the  large  scale  of 
production  decided  technical  advantages.  In  one  of  his  former 
writings.  Professor  Wagner  contended  that  German  peasants 
Hved  to  this  day  in  mean  thatched  huts,  simply  because  their 
ancestors  had  been  impoverished  by  feudal  exactions  and  ruined 
by  wars  which  they  had  no  voice  in  declaring ;  and  he  seems 
to  be  now  as  profoundly  impressed  with  the  belief  that  the 
present  liberty  allowed  to  unscrupulous  speculators  to  utilize 
the  chances  and  opportunities  of  trade  at  the  cost  of  others 
is  producing  evils  in  no  way  less  serious,  which  ought  to  be 
checked  effectively  while  there  is  yet  time.  So  long  as  such 
tendencies  are  left  at  work,  he  says  it  is  idle  trying  to  treat 
sociahsm  with  any  cunning  admixture  of  cakes  and  blows, 
or  charging  State  socialists  with  heating  the  oven  of  social 
democracy.  State  socialists,  he  continues,  comprehend  the 
disease  which  Radical  socialists  only  feel  wildly  and  call  down 
fire  to  cure,  and  they  are  as  much  opposed  to  the  purely  work- 
ing-class State  of  the  latter,  as  they  are  to  the  purely  constitu- 
tional State  of  our  modem  LiberaUsjnus  vulgaris^  as  Wagner 
calls  it. 

The  true  Social  State  lies,  in  his  opinion,  between  the  two. 
WTiat  the  new  social  era  demands — the  era  which  is  already, 
he  thinks,  well  in  course  of  development,  but  which  it  is  the 
business  of  State  socialism  to  help  Providence  to  develop 
aright — is  the  effective  participation  of  poor  and  rich  alike  in 
the  civilization  which  the  increased  productive  resources  of 
society  afford  the  means  of  enjoying  ;  and  this  is  to  be  brought 
about  in  two  ways:  first,  by  a  systematic  education  of  the 
whole  people  according  to  a  well-planned  ideal  of  culture,  and 
second,  by  a  better  distribution  of  the  income  of  society  among 
the  masses.  Now,  to  carry  out  these  requirements,  the  idea 
of  liberty  proper  to  the  constitutional  era  must  naturally  be 


State  Socialism,  389 

finally  discarded,  and  a  very  large  hand  must  be  allowed  to 
the  public  authority  in  every  department  of  human  activity, 
whether  relating  to  the  production,  distribution,  or  consump- 
tion of  wealth.  In  the  first  place,  in  order  to  destroy  the  effect 
of  chance  and  of  the  utilization  of  chances  in  creating  the 
present  accumulations  in  private  hands,  it  is  necessary  to  divert 
into  the  public  treasury  as  far  as  possible  the  whole  of  that  part 
of  the  national  income  which  goes  now,  in  the  form  of  rent, 
interest,  or  profit,  into  the  pockets  of  the  owners  of  land  and 
capital,  and  the  conductors  of  business  enterprises.  Wagner 
would  accordingly  nationalize  (or  municipalize)  gradually  so 
much  of  the  land,  capital,  and  industrial  undertakings  of  the 
country  as  could  be  efficiently  managed  as  public  property  or 
public  enterprises,  and  that  would  include  all  undertakings 
which  tend  to  become  monopolies  even  in  private  hands,  or 
which,  being  conducted  best  on  the  large  scale,  are  already 
managed  under  a  form  of  organization  which,  in  his  opinion, 
has  most  of  the  faults  and  most  of  the  merits  of  State  manage- 
ment— viz.,  the  form  of  joint-stock  companies.  He  would  in 
this  way  throw  on  the  Government  all  the  great  means  of 
communication  and  transport,  railways  and  canals,  telegraphs 
and  post,  and  all  banking  and  insurance  ;  and  on  the  muni- 
cipalities all  such  things  as  the  gas,  light,  and  water  supply. 
Although  he  recognises  the  suitability  of  Government  manage- 
ment as  a  consideration  to  be  weighed  in  nationalizing  an 
industry,  he  states  explicitly  that  the  reason  for  the  change  he 
proposes  is  not  in  the  least  the  fiscal  or  economic  one  that  the 
industry  can  be  more  advantageously  conducted  by  the 
Government,  but  is  a  theory  of  social  politics  which  requires 
that  the  whole  economic  work  of  the  people  ought  to  be  more 
and  more  converted  from  the  form  of  private  into  the  form  of 
public  organization,  so  that  every  working  man.  might  be  a 
public  servant  and  enjoy  the  same  assured  existence  that  other 
public  servants  at  present  possess. 

In  the  next  place,  since  many  industries  must  remain  in 
private  hands,  the  State  is  bound  to  see  the  existence  of  the 
labourers  engaged  in  private  works  guaranteed  as  securely  as 
those  engaged  in  public  works.  It  must  take  steps  to  provide 
them  with  both  an  absolute  and  a  relative  increase  of  wages 


390  Contemporary  Socialism. 

by  instituting  a  compulsory  system  of  paying  wages  as  a 
percentage  of  the  gross  produce ;  it  must  guarantee  them  a 
certain  continuity  of  employment ;  must  limit  the  hours  of 
their  labour  to  the  length  prescribed  by  the  present  state  of 
the  arts  in  the  several  trades  ;  and  supply  a  system  of  public 
insurance  against  accidents,  sickness,  infirmity,  and  age, 
together  with  a  provision  for  widows  and  orphans. 

In  the  third  place,  all  public  works  are  to  be  managed  on 
the  socialistic  principle  of  supplying  manual  labourers  with 
commodities  at  a  cheaper  rate  than  their  social  superiors. 
They  are  to  have  advantages  in  the  matters  of  gas  and  water 
supply,  railway  fares,  school  fees,  and  everything  else  that  is 
provided  by  the  public  authority. 

In  the  fourth  place,  taxation  is  to  be  employed  directly  to 
mitigate  the  inequalities  of  wealth  resulting  from  the  present 
commercial  system,  and  to  save  and  even  increase  the  labourer's 
income  at  the  expense  of  the  income  of  other  classes.  This 
is  to  be  done  by  the  progressive  income-tax,  and  by  the 
application  of  the  product  of  indirect  taxation  on  certain 
articles  of  working-class  consumption  to  special  working-class 
ends.  For  example,  he  thinks  Prince  Bismarck's  proposed 
tobacco  monopoly  might  be  made  "the  patrimony  of  the 
disinherited." 

In  the  fifth  place,  the  State  ought  to  take  measures  to  wean 
the  people  not  only  from  noxious  forms  of  expenditure,  like  the 
expenditure  on  strong  drink,  but  from  useless  and  waste- 
ful expenditure,  and  to  guide  them  into  a  more  economic, 
far-going,  and  beneficial  employment  of  the  earnings  they 
make. 

Now  for  all  this  work,  involving  as  it  does  so  large  an 
amount  of  interference  with  the  natural  liberty  of  things, 
Wagner  not  unreasonably  thinks  that  a  strong  Government  is 
absolutely  indispensable — a  Government  that  knows  its  own 
mind,  and  has  the  power  and  the  will  to  carry  it  out ;  a 
Government  whose  authority  is  established  on  the  history  and 
opinion  of  the  nation,  and  stands  high  above  all  the  contending 
political  factions  of  the  hour.  And  in  Germany,  such  an 
executive  can  only  be  found  in  the  present  Empire,  which  is 
merely  following  "  Frederician  and  Josephine   traditions "  in 


State  Socialism.  391 

coming  forward,  as  it  did  in  the  Imperial  message  of  November, 
1881,  as  a  genuine  "social  monarchy." 

In  this  doctrine  of  Professor  Wagner  we  find  the  same 
general  features  we  have  already  seen  in  the  doctrine  of 
Rodbertus.  It  is  true  he  would  not  nationalize  all  industries 
whatsoever ;  he  would  only  nationalize  such  industries  as  the 
State  is  really  fit  to  manage  successfully.  He  admits  that 
uneconomic  management  can  never  contribute  to  the  public 
good,  and  so  far  he  accepts  a  very  sound  principle  of  limitation. 
But  then  he  applies  the  principle  with  too  great  laxity.  He 
has  an  excessive  idea  of  the  State's  capacities.  He  thinks  that 
every  business  now  conducted  by  a  joint-stock  company  could 
be  just  as  well  conducted  by  the  Government,  and  ought 
therefore  to  be  nationalized ;  but  experience  shows — railway 
experience,  for  example — that  joint-stock  management,  when 
it  is  good,  is  better  than  Government  management  at  its  best. 
Then  Professor  "Wagner  thinks  every  industry  which  has  a 
natural  tendency  to  become  in  any  case  a  practical  monopoly 
would  be  better  in  the  hands  of  the  Government ;  but  Govern- 
ment might  interfere  enough  to  restrain  the  mischiefs  of 
monopoly — as  it  does  in  the  case  of  railways  in  this  country, 
for  example — without  incurring  the  liabilities  of  complete 
management.  Professor  Wagner  would  in  these  ways  throw  a 
great  deal  of  work  on  Government  which  Government  is  not 
very  fit  to  accomplish  successfully,  and  he  would  like  to  throw 
everything  on  it,  if  he  could  overcome  his  scruples  about  its 
capabilities,  because  he  thinks  industrial  nationalization  would 
facihtate  the  realization  of  his  particular  views  of  the  equitable 
distribution  of  wealth.  It  is  true,  again,  that  Wagner's  theory 
of  equitable  distribution  is  not  the  theory  of  Rodbertus — he 
rejects  the  right  of  labour  to  the  whole  product;  but  his 
theory,  if  less  definite,  is  not  less  unjustifiable.  It  is  virtually 
the  theory  of  equality  of  conditions  which  considers  all  in- 
equalities of  fortune  wrong,  because  they  are  held  to  come 
either  from  chance,  or — what  is  worse — from  an  unjust  utiliza- 
tion of  chance,  and  which,  on  that  account,  takes  comparative 
poverty  to  constitute  of  itself  a  righteous  claim  for  compensa- 
tion as  against  comparative  wealth.  Now,  a  state  of  enforced 
equality  of  conditions  would  probably  be  found  neither  possible 


392  Coiitempo7'ary  Socialism, 

nor  desirable,  but  it  is  in  its  very  conception  unjust.  It  may- 
be well,  as  far  as  it  can  be  done,  to  check  refined  methods  of 
deceit,  or  cruel  utilizations  of  an  advantageous  position,  but  it 
can  never  be  right  to  deprive  energy,  talent,  and  character  of 
the  natural  reward  and  incentive  of  their  exertions.  The 
world  would  soon  be  poor  if  it  discouraged  the  skill  of  the 
skilful,  as  it  would  soon  cease  to  be  virtuous  if  it  ostracized 
those  who  were  pre-eminently  honest  or  just.  The  idea  of 
equality  has  been  a  great  factor  in  human  progress,  but  it 
requires  no  such  outcome  as  this.  Equality  is  but  the  respect 
we  owe  to  human  dignity,  and  that  very  respect  for  human 
dignity  demands  security  for  the  fruits  of  industry  to  the 
successful,  and  security  against  the  loss  of  the  spirit  of  personal 
independence  in  the  mass  of  the  people.  But  while  that  is  so, 
there  is  one  broad  requirement  of  that  same  fundamental 
respect  for  human  dignity  which  must  be  admitted  to  be 
wholly  just  and  reasonable — the  requirement  which  we  have 
seen  to  have  been  recognised  by  the  English  economists— that 
the  citizens  be,  as  far  as  possible,  secured,  if  necessary  by 
public  compulsion  and  pubhc  money,  in  the  elementary  con- 
ditions of  all  humane  living.  The  State  might  not  be  right  if 
it  gave  the  aged  a  comfortable  superannuation  allowance,  or 
the  unemployed  agreeable  work  at  good  wages ;  but  it  is  only 
doing  its  duty  when,  with  the  English  law,  it  gives  them 
enough  to  keep  them,  without  taking  away  from  the  one  the 
motives  for  making  a  voluntary  provision  against  age,  or  from 
the  other  the  spur  to  look  out  for  work  for  themselves. 

It  will  be  said  that  this  is  a  standard  that  is  subject  to  a 
certain  variability ;  that  a  house  may  be  considered  unfit  for 
habitation  now  that  our  fathers  would  have  been  fain  to 
occupy ;  that  shoes  seem  an  indispensable  element  of  humane 
living  now,  though,  as  Adam  Smith  informs  us,  they  were  still 
only  an  optional  decency  in  some  parts  of  Scotland  in  his  time. 
But  differences  of  this  nature  lead  to  no  practical  difficulty, 
and  the  standard  is  fixity  of  measure  itself  when  compared 
with  the  indefinite  claims  that  may  be  made  in  the  name  of 
historical  compensation,  or  wild  theories  of  distributive  justice, 
and  it  makes  a  wholesome  appeal  to  recognised  obligations  of 
humanity   instead  of   feeding  a  violent  sense  of  unbounded 


State  Socialism.  393 

hereditary  wrong.  At  all  events,  it  presents  the  true  equality 
— equality  of  moral  rights — over  against  the  false  equality  of 
State  socialism — equality  of  material  conditions ;  and  it  is  able 
to  present  a  better  face  against  that  system,  because  it  re- 
cognises a  certain  measure  of  material  conditions  among  the 
original  moral  rights.  For  tliis  reason  the  English  theory  of 
social  politics  is  the  best  practical  criterion  for  discriminating 
between  socialistic  legislation  and  wholesome  social  reforms. 
The  State  socialistic  position  cannot  be  advantageously  attacked 
from  the  ground  of  Mr.  Spencer  and  the  adherents  of  laissez- 
faire^  who  merely  say,  Let  misfortune  and  poverty  alone ; 
whether  remediable  or  irremediable,  they  are  not  the  State's 
affairs.  The  two  theories  nowhere  come  within  range  ;  but  the 
English  theory  meets  State  socialism  at  every  point,  almost 
hand  to  hand,  for  it  admits  the  State's  competency  to  deal 
with  poverty  and  misfortune,  and  to  alter  men's  material  con- 
ditions to  the  extent  needed  for  the  practical  realization  of 
their  full  moral  rights. 

III.   State  Socialism  and  Social  Reform. 

On  this  English  theory  of  social  politics,  the  State,  though 
not  socialist,  is  very  frankly  social  reformer,  and  those  schools 
of  opinion,  which  are  usually  thought  to  have  been  most  averse 
to  Government  intervention,  have  been  among  the  most  earnest 
in  pressing  that  role  upon  the  State.  Cobden,  I .  presume,  may 
be  taken  as  a  fair  representative  of  the  Manchester  school,  and 
Cobden,  with  all  his  love  of  liberty,  loved  progress  more,  and 
thought  the  best  Government  was  the  Government  that  did 
most  for  social  reform.  When  he  visited  Prussia  in  1838,  he 
was  struck  with  admiration  at  the  paternal  but  improving  rule 
he  found  in  operation  there.  "  I  very  much  suspect,"  he  said, 
"  that  at  present  for  the  great  mass  of  the  people  Prussia 
possesses  the  best  Government  in  Europe.  I  would  gladly 
give  up  my  taste  for  talking  politics,  to  secure  such  a  state  of 
things  in  England.  Had  our  people  such  a  simple  and  econo^ 
mical  Government,  so  deeply  imbued  with  justice  to  all,  and 
aiming  so  constantly  to  elevate  mentally  and  morally  its  popu- 
lation, how  much  better  would  it  be  for  the  twelve  or  fifteen 


394  Contemporary  Socialism. 

millions  in  the  Britisli  Empire,  who,  while  they  possess  no 
electoral  rights,  are  yet  persuaded  they  are  freemen !  "  So  far 
from  thinking,  as  the  Manchester  man  of  polemics  is  always 
made  to  think,  that  the  State  goes  far  enough  when  it  secures 
to  every  man  liberty  to  pursue  his  own  interest  his  own  way, 
as  long  as  he  does  not  interfere  with  the  corresponding  right 
of  his  neighbours,  the  Manchester  man  of  reality  takes  the 
State  severely  to  task  for  neglecting  to  promote  the  mental 
and  moral  elevation  of  the  people ;  the  chief  end  of  Govern- 
ment being  to  establish  not  liberty  alone,  but  every  other 
necessary  security  for  rational  progress.  The  theory  of  laissez- 
faire  would  of  course  permit  measures  required  for  the  public 
safety,  but  what  Cobden  calls  for  are  measures  of  social  ameli- 
oration. Provisions  for  the  better  protection  of  person  and 
property,  as  they  exist,  against  violence  or  fraud,  make  up  but 
a  small  part  of  legitimate  State  duty,  compared  wiih  provisions 
for  their  better  development,  for  enlarging  the  powers  of  the 
national  manhood,  or  the  product  of  the  national  resources. 
The  institution  of  property  itself  is  a  provision  for  progress, 
and  could  never  have  originated  under  the  system  of  laissez- 
faire,  which  now  makes  it  a  main  branch  of  State  work  to 
defend  it.  In  the  form  of  permanent  and  exclusive  possession, 
it  is  undoubtedly  a  contravention  of  the  equal  freedom  of  all 
to  the  use  of  their  common  inheritance,  committed  for  the 
purpose  of  securing  their  more  productive  use  of  it.  It  inter- 
feres with  their  access  to  the  land,  and  with  the  equality  of 
their  opportunities,  but  then  it  enhances  and  concentrates  the 
energies  of  the  occupants,  and  it  doubles  the  yield  of  the  soil. 
It  promotes  two  objects,  which  are  quite  as  paramount  con- 
cerns of  the  State  as  liberty  itself— it  improves  the  industrial 
manhood  of  the  nation,  and  it  increases  the  productivity  of  the 
natural  resources  ;  and  institutions  that  conduce  to  such  results 
are  not  really  infractions  of  liberty,  but  rather  complements 
of  it,  because  they  give  people  an  ampler  use  of  their  own 
powers,  and  create,  by  means  of  the  increase  of  production  they 
work,  more  and  better  opportunities  than  those  they  take 
away. 

Now  the  lines  of  legitimate  intervention  prescribed  by  the 
necessities  of  progress,  and  already  followed  in  the   original 


State  Socialism.  395 

institution  of  property,  will  naturally,  when  extended  through 
our  complicated  civilization,  include  a  very  considerable  and 
varied  field  of  social  and  industrial  activity,  and  this  has  been 
all  along  recognised  by  the  English  economists  and  statesmen. 
While  opposed  to  the  State  doing  anything  either  moral  or 
material  for  individuals,  which  individuals  could  do  better,  or 
with  better  results,  for  themselves,  they  agreed  in  requiring 
the  State,  first,  to  undertake  any  industrial  work  it  had  superior 
natural  advantages  for  conducting  successfully ;  and  second, 
to  protect  the  weaker  classes  effectively  in  the  essentials  of  all 
rational  and  humane  living — in  what  Adam  Smith  calls  "an 
undeformed  and  unmutilated  manhood" — not  only  against 
the  ravages  of  violence  or  fear  or  insecurity,  but  against  those 
of  ignorance,  disease,  and  want.  Smith,  we  know,  would  even 
save  them  from  cowardice  by  a  system  of  military  training, 
and  from  fanaticism  by  an  established  Church,  because,  he 
said,  cowardice  and  fanaticism  were  as  great  deformities  of 
manhood  as  ignorance  or  disease,  and  prevented  a  man  from 
having  command  of  himself  and  his  own  powers  quite  as 
effectually  as  violence  or  oppression.  Laws  which  give  every 
man  better  command  and  use  of  his  own  energies  are  in  mani- 
fest harmony  with  liberty,  and  for  the  State  to  do  such  indus- 
trial work  as  it  has  special  natural  advantages  for  doing  is 
conformable  with  the  principle  of  free-trade  itself,  which  has 
always  prescribed  to  men  and  nations  as  the  best  rule  for  their 
prosperity,  that  they  should  concentrate  their  strength  on  the 
branches  of  industry  they  possess  natural  advantages  for  culti- 
vating, and  give  up  wasting  their  labour  on  less  productive 
employment.  Mr.  Chamberlain  is  certainly  wrong  in  thinking 
over-government  an  extinct  danger  under  democratic  institu- 
tions, a  mere  survival  from  times  of  oppression  which  haunts 
the  people  still,  though  they  are  their  own  masters,  with  foolish 
fears  of  over-governing  themselves.  In  reality,  the  danger  has 
much  more  probably  increased,  as  John  Stuart  Mill  believed, 
for  if  we  cannot  over-govern  ourselves,  we  can  very  easily  and 
cheerfully  over-govern  one  another,  and  a  majority  may  impose 
its  brute  will  with  even  less  scruple  than  a  monarch  ;  but  how- 
ever that  may  be,  those  who  tremble  most  sincerely  for  the 
ark  of  liberty  cannot  see  any  undue  contraction  of  the  field  of 


39^  Contemporary  Socialism. 

individual  action  in  an  extension  of  authority  for  either  of  the 
two  purposes  here  specified,  for  the  purpose  of  undertaking 
industrial  work  which  private  initiative  cannot  prosecute  so 
advantageously,  or  of  making  more  secure  to  the  weaker 
citizens  those  primary  conditions  of  normal  humanity,  which 
are  really  their  natural  right.  The  first  of  these  purposes  is 
quite  consistent  with  the  principles  of  men  like  W.  von  Hum- 
boldt, who  contend  that  the  best  means  of  national  prosperity 
is  the  cultivation  to  the  utmost  of  the  individual  energy  of  the 
people,  and  who  are  opposed  to  Government  interference  be- 
cause it  represses  or  supplants  that  energy.  They  welcome 
everything  that  tends  to  economize  and  develop  energy,  to 
place  things  in  the  hands  of  those  that  can  do  them  best,  and 
generally  to  increase  the  productive  capacity  of  the  whole 
community.  They  believe  that  machinery,  division  of  labour, 
factory  systems,  keenest  conditions  of  competition,  however 
they  may  at  first  seem  to  contract  men's  opportunities  of 
employment,  always  end  in  multiplying  them,  and,  because 
they  increase  or  economize  the  productive  powers  of  those 
actually  employed,  really  expand  the  field  of  employment  for 
all.  Now  Government  management  would  of  course  have  a 
like  operation  wherever  Government  management  effected  a 
like  economy  or  increase  in  the  productive  powers  of  society, 
and  would  really  expand  the  field  of  individual  initiative 
which  it  appeared  to  contract ;  and  those  who  believe  most  in 
individual  energy  and  its  power  of  seeking  out  for  itself  the 
most  advantageous  new  outlets,  will  find  least  to  complain  of 
in  an  intervention  of  authority  which  releases  men  from  work 
ill-suited  to  their  powers  to  do,  and  sends  them  into  work 
where  their  powers  can  be  more  fruitfully  occupied. 

The  second  purpose  of  legitimate  intervention  seems  even 
less  open  to  objection  from  that  side.  The  State  is  asked  to 
go  in  social  reform  only  as  far  as  it  goes  in  judicial  adminis- 
tration— it  is  asked  to  secure  for  every  man  as  effectively  as  it 
can  those  essentials  of  all  rational  and  humane  living  which 
are  really  every  man's  right,  because  without  them  he  would 
be  something  less  than  man,  his  manhood  would  be  wanting, 
maimed,  mutilated,  deformed,  incapable  of  fulfilling  the  ends 
of  its  being.     Those  original  requirements  of  humane  existence 


State  Socialism,  397 

are  dues  of  the  common  nature  we  wear,  which  we  cannot  see 
extinguished  in  others  without  an  injury  to  our  own  self- 
respect,  and  the  State  is  bound  to  provide  adequate  securities 
for  one  of  them  as  much  as  for  another.  The  same  reason 
which  justified  the  State  at  first  in  protecting  person  and 
property  against  violence,  justified  it  yesterday  in  abolishing 
slavery,  justifies  it  to-day  in  abolishing  ignorance,  and  will 
justify  it  to-morrow  in  abolishing  other  degrading  conditions 
of  hfe.  The  public  sense  of  human  dignity  may  grow  from 
age  to  age  and  be  offended  to-morrow  by  what  it  tolerates 
to-day,  but  the  principle  of  sound  intervention  is  all  tlu-ough 
the  same — that  the  proposed  measure  is  necessary  to  enable 
men  to  hve  the  true  life  of  a  man  and  fulfil  the  proper  ends  of 
rational  being.  A  thoughtful  French  writer  defends  State 
intervention  for  the  purpose  of  social  amelioration  as  being  a 
mere  duty  of  what  he  calls  reparative  justice.  Popular  misery 
and  decadence,  he  would  say,  is  always  very  largely  the  result 
of  bad  laws  and  other  bad  civil  conditions,  as  we  see  it  plainly 
to  have  been  in  the  case  of  the  Irish  cottiers,  the  Scotch  crofters, 
and  the  rural  labourers  of  England,  and  when  the  community 
has  really  inflicted  the  injury,  the  community  is  bound  in  the 
merest  justice  to  repair  it.  And  the  obligation  would  not  be 
exhausted  with  the  repeal  of  bad  laws ;  it  would  require  the 
positive  restoration  to  the  declining  populations  of  the  condi- 
tions of  real  prosperity  from  which  they  fell.  But  though  this 
is  a  specific  ground  which  may  occasionally  quicken  the  State's 
remedial  action  with  something  of  the  energy  of  remorse,  it  is 
no  extension  of  its  natural  and  legitimate  sphere  of  interven- 
tion, and  the  State  might  properly  take  every  measure  neces- 
sary for  the  effectual  restoration  of  a  declining  section  of  the 
population  to  conditions  of  real  prosperity  on  the  broad  and 
simple  principle  already  laid  down,  that  the  measure  is  neces- 
sary to  put  those  people  in  a  position  to  fulfil  their  vocation  as 
human  beings.  Hopeless  conditions  of  labour  are  as  contrary 
to  sound  nature,  and  as  fatal  to  any  proper  use  of  man's  ener- 
gies, as  slavery  itself,  and  their  mere  existence  constitutes  a 
sufiicient  cause  for  the  State's  intervention,  apart  from  any 
special  responsibility  the  State  may  bear  for  their  historical 
origin.     Even  the  measure  of  the  required  intervention  is  no 


39^  Conteinporaiy  Socialism. 

way  less,  for  if  its  purpose  is  to  preserve  some  essential  of  full 
normal  manhood,  its  only  limit  is  that  of  being  effectual  to 
serve  the  purpose.  The  original  natural  obligation  of  the  State 
needs  no  expansion  then  from  historical  responsibilities  to  cover 
any  effectual  form  of  remedial  action  against  the  social  decad- 
ence of  particular  classes  of  the  population,  -whether  it  be  the 
constitution  of  a  new  right  like  the  right  to  a  fair  rent,  the 
adoption  of  administrative  measures  like  the  migration  of  re- 
dundant inhabitants,  or  the  provision  of  wise  facilities  for  the 
rest  by  the  loan  of  public  money. 

It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  we  have  here  within  the  lines  of 
accepted  and  even  "  orthodox  "  English  theory  a  doctrine  of 
social  politics  which  gives  the  Government  an  ample  and  per- 
fectly adequate  place  in  the  promotion  of  all  necessary  social 
reform  ;  and  if  we  are  all  socialists  now,  aS  is  so  often  said,  it 
is  not  because  we  have  undergone  any  change  of  principles  on 
social  legislation,  but  only  a  public  awakening  to  our  social 
miseries.  The  Churches,  for  example,  while  they  left  Lord 
Shaftesbury  to  fight  his  battles  for  the  helpless  alone,  have  now 
shared  in  this  social  awakening,  and  show  not  only  a  general 
ardour  to  agitate  social  questions,  but  even  some  pains  to  under- 
stand them ;  but  the  Churches  did  not  neglect  Lord  Shaftesbury 
fifty  years  ago,  because  they  thought  his  Factory  Bills  pro- 
ceeded from  unsound  views  of  the  State's  functions,  but  merely 
because  their  interest  was  not  then  sufficiently  aroused  in  the 
temporal  welfare  of  the  poor,  and  with  all  their  individual 
charities  they  responded  little  to  the  grievances  of  social  classes. 
We  are  all  socialists  now,  only  in  feeling  as  much  interest  in 
these  grievances  as  the  socialists  are  in  the  habit  of  doing,  but 
we  have  not  departed  from  our  old  lines  of  social  policy,  and 
there  is  no  need  we  should,  for  they  are  broad  enough  to  satisfy 
every  claim  of  sound  social  reform. 

It  is  only  when  these  lines  are  transgressed  that,  strictly 
speaking,  socialism  begins;  and  though  it  is  hopeless  to  think 
of  confining  the  vulgar  use  of  the  word  to  its  strict  signification, 
it  is  at  least  essential  to  do  so  if  we  desire  any  clear  or  firm 
grasp  of  principle.  The  socialism  of  the  present  time  extends 
the  State's  intervention  from  those  industrial  undertakings  it 
IB  fitted  to  manage  well  to  all  industrial  undertakings  what- 


State  Socialism.  399 

ever,  and  from  establisliing  securities  for  the  full  use  of  men's 
energies  to  attempting  to  equalize  in  some  way  the  results  of 
their  use  of  them.  It  may  be  shortly  described  as  aiming  at 
the  progressive  nationalization  of  industries  -with  a  view  to  the 
progressive  equalization  of  incomes.  The  common  pleas  for 
this  policy  are,  first,  the  necessity  of  introducing  a  distribution 
of  wealth  more  in  accordance  with  personal  merit  by  neutral- 
izing the  effects  of  chance,  which  at  present  throw  some  into 
opulence  without  any  co-operation  from  their  own  labour,  and 
press  thousands  into  penury  in  spite  of  their  most  honest  exer- 
tions ;  and  second,  the  advantage  society  would  reap  from  the 
mere  economy  of  the  resources  at  present  wasted  in  unnecessary 
competition.  Both  pleas  are,  however  delusive ;  it  is  neither 
good  nor  possible  to  suppress  chance,  and  if  competition  in- 
volves some  loss,  it  yields  a  much  more  abounding  gain. 

A  sense  of  the  blind  play  of  chance  in  all  things  human  lies 
indeed  beneath  all  work  of  social  relief.  "  Hodie  mihi,  eras 
tibi,"  wrote  the  good  Regent  Murray  over  his  lintel  to  avert 
the  grudge  of  envy,  and  the  same  feeling  of  the  uncertainty  of 
fortune  quickens  the  thought  of  pity.  Men  reflect  how  much 
of  their  own  comfort  they  owe  to  good  circumstances  rather 
than  good  deserts,  and  how  much  more  bad  circumstances  have 
often  to  do  with  poverty  than  bad  guiding.  To  change  these 
bad  conditions  so  far  as  to  preserve  for  every  man  intact  the 
essentials  of  common  progressive  manhood  is  a  proper  object 
of  social  work.  But  while  mitigating  the  operation  of  chance 
to  that  extent  is  well,  to  try  and  suppress  its  operation  alto- 
gether would  be  injurious,  even  if  it  were  possible.  For  there 
is  no  pursuit  under  the  sun  in  which  chance  has  not  its  part 
as  well  as  skill,  and  skill  itself  is  often  nothing  but  a  quick 
grasp  of  happy  chance.  To  discourage  the  alert  from  seizing 
good  opportunities  on  the  wing,  by  confiscating  the  results  and 
distributing  them  among  the  languid  and  inactive,  is  the  same 
thing  as  to  discourage  them  by  like  means  from  exerting  all 
their  industry  in  any  other '  way.  It  violates  their  individual 
right  with  no  better  effect  than  to  cripple  the  national  pro- 
duction. They  are  entitled  to  the  best  conditions  for  the  suc- 
cessful use  of  their  individual  energies,  and  the  best  conditions 
for  the  use  of  individual  energies  are  the  true  securities  for 


400  Contemporary  Socialism. 

national  progress.  The  sound  policy  is  not  tlie  greater  equal- 
ization of  opportunities,  but  their  greater  utilization.  It  may 
be  right  to  make  ships  seaworthy  and  their  masters  competent 
navigators,  but  if  one  of  them  gets  delayed  in  a  calm  or  dis- 
abled by  a  storm,  while  another  has  caught  a  fair  wind  and  is 
carried  on  to  port,  it  would  answer  no  good  purpose  to  equalize 
their  gains  for  the  mere  correction  of  the  inequality  in  their 
opportunities.  It  would  relax  in  both  masters  alike  the  supreme 
essentials  of  all  successful  labour — activity,  vigilance,  enter- 
prise. State  action  with  respect  to  the  quips  and  arrows  of 
fortune  ought  to  go  as  far  but  no  farther  than  State  action  with 
respect  to  the  crimes  and  hostilities  of  men,  or  with  respect  to 
evil  forces  of  nature  like  those  of  infectious  diseases — it  ought 
to  content  itself  with  effectually  protecting  the  primary  con- 
ditions of  sound  manhood  against  their  outrages.  It  may  do 
what  it  can,  not  merely  to  relieve  the  unfortunate  in  their 
extremity,  but  to  prevent  their  coming  to  extremity,  to  arrest, 
if  possible,  their  decline,  to  check  or  soften  the  trade  fluctuations 
that  often  swamp  them,  and  to  facilitate  their  self-recovery  ; 
but,  when  it  goes  on  to  suppress  or  equalize  the  operation  of 
fortune,  it  destroys  the  good  with  the  evil,  and  even  if  it  re- 
moved the  tares,  would  find  it  had  only  spoiled  the  harvest  of 
wheat.  The  present  industrial  system  has  its  defects,  but  it 
certainly  has  one  immense  advantage  which  would  be  forfeited 
under  socialism — it  tends  to  elicit  to  their  utmost  the  talents 
and  energies  alike  of  employers  and  employed.  The  languor 
of  the  "  Government  stroke  "  and  the  slow  mechanism  of  a 
State  department  are  unfavourable  to  an  abundant  production. 
The  general  slackening  of  industry,  and  the  extinction  of  those 
innumerable  sources  of  active  initiative  which  at  present  are 
so  busy  pushing  out  new  and  fruitful  developments,  are  too 
great  a  price  to  pay  for  the  suppression  of  the  evils  of  com- 
petition. To  effect  some  economies  in  the  use  of  capital,  we 
damage  or  destroy  the  forces  by  which  capital  is  produced,  and 
really  lose  the  pound  to  save  the  penny. 

Even  from  the  standing-point  of  a  good  distribution  of 
wealth,  if  by  a  good  distribution  we  mean,  not  an  equal  dis- 
tribution of  the  produce,  however  small  the  individual  share, 
but,  what  is  sureiy  much  better,  a  high  general  level  of  com- 


State  Socialism.  401 

fort,  though  considerable  inequalities  may  remain,  then  an 
abundant  production  is  still  the  most  indispensable  thing,  for 
it  is  the  most  certain  of  all  means  to  that  high  general  level 
of  comfort.  Even  in  those  agricultural  countries  where  this 
result  is  promoted  by  a  land  system  favouring  peasant  pro- 
perties, the  result  is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  occupying 
ownership  is  itself  the  best  condition  for  high  production  ;  and 
if  we  compare  the  principal  modern  industrial  nations,  we  shall 
find  labour  enjoying  the  best  real  remuneration  in  those  where 
the  rate  of  production  is  highest,  where  employers  are  most 
competent,  machinery  most  perfected,  and  labour  itself  per- 
sonall}''  most  efficient.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  while  the 
general  level  of  comfort  rises  under  a  policy  that  develops  pro- 
ductivity even  at  the  risk  of  widening  inequality,  the  general 
level  of  comfort  always  sinks  under  the  contrary  policy  which 
sacrifices  productivity  to  socialistic  ideas  and  claims. 

We  have  practical  experience  of  the  working  of  socialism  in 
various  forms,  and  under  the  most  opposite  conditions  of  culture, 
and  the  experience  is  everywhere  the  same.  Custom  in  Samoa, 
for  example,  gives  a  man  a  pretty  strict  right  to  go  to  his 
neighbour  and  requisition  what  he  wants,  or  even  to  quarter 
himself  in  the  house  without  payment,  as  long  as  he  pleases. 
No  one  dares  to  refuse,  for  fear  of  losing  credit  and  suffering 
reproach.  Originating  as  a  well-meant  refuge  for  the  dis- 
tressed, the  system  has  become  still  more  a  subterfuge  for  the 
lazy,  and  Dr.  Turner  sums  up  his  account  of  it  by  saying, 
"  This  communistic  system  is  a  sad  hindrance  to  the  indus- 
trious, and  eats  like  a  canker-worm  at  the  roots  of  individual 
and  national  progress."  The  disheartening  of  the  industrious 
has  an  even  worse  effect  than  the  encouragement  of  the  in- 
dolent ;  the  more  they  make,  the  more  subject  they  are  to  the 
imposition.  The  Enghsh  agricultural  labourers  belong  to  a 
very  different  state  of  society  from  the  savages  of  Samoa.  They 
are  of  an  energetic  race,  which  if  it  does  not  positively  love 
work,  has  probably  as  little  aversion  to  it  as  any  nation  in  the 
world,  and  seems  often  really  to  delight  in  the  hardest  exertion; 
but  in  England  the  effect  of  giving  the  poor  a  similar  socialistic 
right  was  precisely  the  same  as  in  Samoa.  While  we  are  sup- 
posed to  have  been  advancing  in  socialism  with  our  Factory 

D   D 


402  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Acts,  we  -were  really  retreating  from  it  in  our  Poor  Law.  The 
old  English  laws  which  for  centuries  first  fixed  labourers' 
wages,  and  then  made  up  the  deficiencies  of  the  wages,  if  such 
occurred,  out  of  the  poor  rates,  were  certainly  socialistic,  and 
the  commission  that  inquired  into  their  working  sixty  j'^ears 
ago  reported  that  their  worst  effect  had  been  to  make  the 
labourers  such  poor  workers  that  they  were  hardly  worth  the 
wages  they  got.  The  men  were  by  law  unable  to  earn  more 
if  they  worked  more,  or  to  lose  anything  if  they  worked  less, 
and  so  their  very  working  powers  drooped  and  withered.  As 
most  modem  socialists  put  their  trust  entirely  in  the  old  motive 
of  self-interest,  and  propose  to  pay  every  man  according  to  his 
work,  their  only  resource  against  such  a  result  would  be  a  stern 
system  of  poor-law  administration,  like  the  English,  and  that 
would  of  course  involve  a  departure  from  their  favourite  ideal 
of  furnishing  the  dependent  poor  with  as  decent  and  com- 
fortable a  living  as  the  independent  poor  gain  for  themselves 
by  their  work.  The  change  from  Samoa  to  rural  England  is 
probably  not  so  great  as  the  change  from  rural  England  to 
Brook  Farm  and  the  other  experimental  communities  of  the 
United  States,  companies  of  cultivated  and  earnest  people, 
coming  from  one  of  the  best  civilized  stocks,  and  settling  under 
the  favourable  material  conditions  of  a  new  country  for  the 
very  purpose  of  working  out  a  socialist  ideal.  Yet  in  these 
American  communities,  socialistic  institutions  led  to  precisely 
the  same  results  as  they  did  in  England  and  in  Samoa,  a 
slackening  of  industry,  and  a  deterioration  of  the  general  level 
of  comfort.  No  doubt,  as  Horace  Greeley  said,  who  knew  these 
communities  well,  and  lived  for  a  time  in  more  than  one  of 
them,  there  came  to  them  along  with  the  lofty  souls,  who  are 
willing  to  labour  and  endure,  "  scores  of  whom  the  world  is 
quite  worthy,  the  conceited,  the  crotchety,  the  selfish,  the 
headstrong,  the  pugnacious,  the  unappreciated,  the  played-out, 
the  idle,  the  good-for-nothing  generally,  who,  finding  them- 
selves utterly  out  of  place,  and  at  a  discount  in  the  world  as  it 
is,  rashly  conclude  that  they  are  exactly  fitted  for  the  world  as 
it  ought  to  be."  But  the  proportion  of  difficult  subjects  would 
not  be  larger  in  Brook  Farm  or  New  Harmony  than  it  is  in  the 
ordinary  world  outside,  and  in  these  communities  they  would 


State  Socialism.  403 

be  under  the  constant  influence  of  leaders  of  the  highest  char- 
acter and  an  almost  religious  enthusiasm.  If  the  new  and 
better  economic  motives,  which  romantic  socialists  like  Mr. 
Bellamy  always  assure  us  are  to  carry  us  to  such  great  things 
as  soon  as  the  suppression  of  the  present  pecuniary  motive 
allows  them  to  rise  into  operation — if  the  love  of  work  for  its 
own  sake,  the  sense  of  public  duty,  the  desire  of  public  appre- 
ciation, could  be  expected  to  prevail  anywhere  to  any  purpose, 
it  would  be  among  the  gifted  and  noble  spirits  who  founded 
the  community  of  Brook  Farm.  But  the  late  W.  H.  Channing, 
who  was  a  member  of  the  community  and  looked  back  upon 
it  with  the  tenderest  feelings,  explains  its  failure  by  saying : 
"  The  great  evil,  the  radical,  practical  danger,  seemed  to  be  a 
willingness  to  do  work  half  thorough,  to  rest  in  poor  results, 
to  be  content  amidst  comparatively  squalid  conditions,  and  to 
form  habits  of  indolence."* 

The  idleness  of  the  idle  was  one  of  the  chief  standing 
troubles  in  all  the  socialistic  experiments  of  the  United  States. 
Mr.  Noyes  gives  us  an  account  of  forty-seven  communistic 
experiments  which  had  been  made  under  modern  socialist 
influences  in  the  United  States  and  had  failed,  while  Mr. 
Nordhoff,  on  the  other  hand,  furnishes  a  like  account  of 
seventy-two  communities,  established  mainly  under  religious 
influences  (fifty-eight  of  them  belonging  to  the  Shakers  alone), 
which  have  been  not  merely  social  but  economic  successes, 
some  of  them  for  more  than  a  hundred  years  ;  and  one  is 
struck  with  the  degree  in  which  the  idler  difficulty  has  con- 
tributed to  the  failure  of  the  forty-seven,  and  in  which  the 
continual  and  comparatively  successful  conflict  with  that  diffi- 
culty by  means  of  their  peculiar  system  of  religious  discipline 
has  aided  in  the  success  of  the  other  seventy-two.  Mr.  Noyes 
is  himself  founder  of  the  Oneida  community,  and  bases  his 
descriptions  of  the  rest  on  information  supplied  by  men  who 
were  members  of  the  communities  he  describes,  or  on  the 
materials  collected  by  Mr.  Macdonald,  a  Scotch  Owenite,  who 
visited  most  of  the  American  communities  for  the  purpose 
of  describing   them.      No  causes   of  failure   are  more   often 

*  Frothingham's  "  W.  H.  Channing :  a  Memoir,"  p.  18. 


404  Contemporary  Socialism. 

mentioned  by  h.im  than  "  too  many  idlers"  and  "  bad  manage- 
ment." Not  tbat  industry  was  relaxed  all  round.  On  the 
contrary,  it  seems  to  have  been  a  peculiarity  of  the  Owenite 
and  Fourierist  communities,  that  the  industrious  wrought 
much  harder  (and  in  most  of  them  for  much  poorer  fare)  than 
labourers  of  ordinary  life.  Macdonald  was  surprised  at  the 
marvellous  industry  he  saw  as  he  watched  them,  and  would 
say  to  himself :  "  If  you  fail,  I  will  give  it  up,  for  never  did  I 
see  men  work  so  well  and  so  brotherly  with  each  other."  But 
then  a  little  way  off  he  would  come  on  people  who  "  merely 
crawled  about,  probably  sick  (he  charitably  suggests),  just 
looking  on  like  myself  at  anything  which  fell  in  their  way." 
A  very  common  feeling  among  members  of  these  communities 
seems  to  have  been  that  they  were  far  more  troubled  with 
idlers  than  the  rest  of  the  world,  because  their  system  itself 
presented  special  attractions  to  that  unwelcome  class.  "  Men 
came,"  says  one  of  the  Trumbull  Phalanx,  "  with  the  idea  that 
they  could  live  in  idleness  at  the  expense  of  the  purchasers 
of  the  estate,  and  their  ideas  were  practically  carried  out, 
while  others  came  with  good  heart  for  the  work."  The  same 
testimony  is  given  about  the  Sylvania  Association.  '  *  Idle  and 
greedy  people,"  says  the  writer  of  this  testimony,  "  find  their 
way  into  such  attempts,  and  soon  show  forth  their  character 
by  burdening  others  with  too  much  labour,  and  in  times  of 
scarcity  supplying  themselves  with  more  than  their  allowance 
of  various  necessaries,  instead  of  taking  less."  Idle  and  greedy 
people,  no  doubt,  did  get  into  these  communities,  but  these 
idle  and  greedy  people  constitute,  I  fear,  a  very  large  propor- 
tion of  mankind,  and  the  point  is  that  socialistic  institutions 
unfortunately  offer  them  encouragement  and  opportunity. 
The  experience  of  American  communism  directly  contradicts 
John  Stuart  Mill's  opinion,  that  men  are  not  more  hkely  to 
evade  their  fair  share  of  the  work  under  a  socialistic  system 
than  they  are  now.  That  difficulty  in  one  form  or  another 
was  their  constant  vexation.  The  members  of  Owen's  com- 
munity at  Yellow  Springs  belonged  in  general  to  a  superior 
class ;  but  one  of  them,  in  stating  the  causes  of  the  failure 
of  that  community,  says :  "  The  industrious,  the  skilful,  and 
the  strong  saw  the  products  of  their  labour  enjoyed   by  the 


State  Socialism.  405 

indolent,  and  the  unskilled,  and  the  improvident,  and  self-love 
rose  against  benevolence,  A  band  of  musicians  insisted  that 
their  brassy  liarmony  was  as  necessary  to  the  common  happi- 
ness as  bread  and  meat,  and  declined  to  enter  the  harvest  field 
or  the  workshop.  A  lecturer  upon  Natural  Science  insisted 
upon  talking  only  while  others  worked.  Mechanics  whose 
day's  labour  brought  two  dollars  into  the  common  stock 
insisted  that  they  should  in  justice  work  only  half  as  long  as 
the  agriculturist,  whose  day's  work  brought  only  one."  The 
same  evil,  according  to  R.  D.  Owen,  contributed  to  the  fall 
of  New  Harmony ;  "  there  was  not  disinterested  industry,"  he 
says,  "  there  was  not  mutual  confidence."  A  lady  who  was 
a  member  of  the  Marlboro'  Association  in  Ohio,  a  socialistic 
experiment  that  lasted  four  years  and  then  failed,  attributes 
the  failure  to  "  the  comphcated  state  of  the  business  concerns, 
the  amount  of  debt  contracted,  and  the  feeling  that  each 
would  work  with  more  energy,  for  a  time  at  least,  if  thrown 
upon  his  own  resources,  with  plenty  of  elbow-room,  and 
nothing  to  distract  his  attention." 

The  magnitude  of  this  difficulty  only  appears  the  greater 
when  we  turn  from  the  forty-seven  socialistic  experiments 
which  have  failed  to  the  seventy-two  which  have  thriven. 
The  Shakers  and  Rappists  are  undoubtedly  very  industrious 
people,  who,  by  producing  a  good  article,  have  won  and  kept 
for  years  a  firm  hold  of  the  American  market,  and  being,  in 
consequence  of  their  institution  of  celibacy,  a  community  of 
adult  workers  exclusively,  every  man  and  every  woman  being 
a  productive  labourer,  the  wonder  is  they  are  not  wealthier 
and  more  prosperous  even  than  they  are.  Their  economic 
prosperity  is  based,  as  economic  prosperity  always  is  and 
must  be,  on  their  general  habits  of  industry,  and  the  natural 
tendency  of  socialistic  arrangements  to  relax  these  habits  is 
in  their  case  effectually,  though  not  without  difficulty,  counter- 
acted by  their  religious  discipline.  Idleness  is  a  sin  ;  next  to 
disobedience  to  the  elders,  no  other  sin  is  more  reprobated 
among  them,  because  no  other  sin  is  at  once  so  besetting  and 
so  dangerous  there,  and  the  conquest  and  suppression  of  idle- 
ness is  a  continual  object  of  their  vigilance,  and  of  their 
ordinary  devotional  practice.     Mr.  Nordhoff  publishes  a  few  of 


4o6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

their  most  popular  hj'^mns,  and  one  is  struck  with  the  space 
the  cultivation  of  personal  industry  seems  to  occupy  in  their 
thoughts.  "  Old  Slug,"  as  they  delight  to  nickname  the  idler, 
is  the  "  Old  Adam  "  of  the  Shakers,  and  a  public  sentiment 
of  hatred  and  contempt  for  the  indolent  man  is  sedulously 
fostered  by  them.  As  they  not  only  work,  but  also  live  under 
one  another's  constant  supervision,  and  within  earshot  of  one 
another's  criticism,  they  more  than  replace  the  eye  of  the 
master  by  the  keener  and  more  sleepless  eye  of  moral  and 
social  police.  And  if  all  this  discipline  fails,  they  have  the 
last  resource  of  expulsion.  They  easily  make  the  idler  too 
uncomfortable  to  remain.  "  They  have,"  says  Mr.  NordhofiP, 
"  no  difficulty  in  sloughing  off  persons  who  come  with  bad  or 
low  motives."  They  exercise,  in  short,  the  power  of  dismissal, 
the  last  sanction  in  ordinary  use  in  the  old  state  of  society. 
Not  that  they  make  any  virtue  of  strenuous  labour.  They 
work  moderately,  and  avoid  anything  like  fatigue  or  exhaus- 
tion. They  frankly  acknowledged  to  Mr.  Nordhoff,  once  and 
again,  that  three  hired  men  taken  in  from  the  ordinary  world 
would  do  as  much  work  as  five  or  six  of  their  members.  Their 
wants  are  few  and  simple,  and  they  are  satisfied  with  the 
moderate  exertion  that  suffices  to  supply  them  ;  but  they  will 
tolerate  no  shirking  of  that  in  any  shape  or  form,  and  this 
alone  saves  them  from  disaster.  The  experiences  of  these 
successful  Shaker  and  Rappist  communities  serve,  therefore, 
to  show,  even  better  than  the  experiences  of  the  unsuccessful 
Owenite  and  Fourierist  communities,  the  gravity  that  the 
idleness  difficulty  would  assume  in  a  general  socialistic  regime, 
which  possessed  nothing  in  the  nature  of  the  power  of  dis- 
missal, and  in  which  we  could  not  calculate  either  on  the 
formation  of  an  efiective  public  opinion  against  idleness,  or  on 
its  effective  application  if  it  were  formed.  The  men  who 
founded  the  unsuccessful  communities  were  far  superior  to  the 
Shakers  in  business  ability  and  education,  and  they  had  more 
money  to  begin  their  experiments  with,  but  where  they  failed 
the  Shakers  have  succeeded  through  the  indirect  economic 
effects  of  their  rigorous  religious  discipline.  But  the  evi- 
dence is  as  plain  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other  as  to  the 
natural,  and  even  powerful,  effect  of  socialistic  arrangements 


State  Socialism.  407 

in  relaxing  the  industry  of  many  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men. 

The  same  sources  of  evidence  prove  with  equal  clearness 
the  development  under  socialistic  institutions  of  two  other 
concurrent  causes  of  decline.  I  have  already  quoted  Mr. 
Channing's  statement  that  the  Brook  Farm  community  showed 
a  disposition  to  be  content  with  comparatively  squalid  condi- 
tions of  life.  Mr.  Nordhoff  would  probably  not  use  the  word 
squaUd  of  anything  he  saw  in  the  Shaker  and  Rappist  com- 
munities he  describes,  except  perhaps  in  certain  instances  of 
the  state  of  the  public  streets ;  and  in  some  points,  such  as  the 
scrupulous  cleanness  of  the  interior  of  their  houses,  he  would 
set  them  far  above  their  neighbours — you  could  eat  your 
dinner,  he  says,  off  their  floors.  Still  the  people  he  found 
everywhere  content,  if  not  exactly  with  squalid,  certainly 
with  poor  and  dull  and  rough  conditions  of  life,  much  poorer, 
duller,  and  rougher  than  they  might  easily  be.  They  enjoyed 
equality,  security  from  harassing  anxiety  for  the  morrow, 
abundance  even  for  their  limited  wants,  independence  from 
subjection  to  a  master,  but  they  were  weak  in  the  ordinary 
springs  of  progress.  The  spirit  of  material  improvement  was 
not  much  abroad  among  them.  Give  me  the  stationary  state 
of  society  and  contentment,  you  may  exclaim ;  but  then  even 
this  stationary  state  is  only  maintained  in  these  sequestered 
communities  by  the  constant  play  of  peculiar  religious  influ- 
ences which  cannot  be  counted  on  everywhere,  and  it  would 
soon  change  into  a  declining  state  in  the  great  seething  world 
outside  if  it  were  not  effectively  counter- worked  by  the  most 
powerful  incentives  to  progress.  Now  the  same  equalizing 
social  arrangements  which  destroy  one  of  the  most  essential 
of  these  incentives  by  guaranteeing  men  the  results  of  industry 
without  its  exertion,  enfeeble  a  second  by  predisposing  them 
to  rest  content  with  the  lower  conditions  of  life  to  which  they 
are  reduced. 

A  third  cause  of  decline  to  which  the  American  experience 
shows  socialistic  institutions  to  be  incident  is  a  certain  weak- 
ness in  the  management,  produced  sometimes  by  divided 
counsels,  sometimes  by  the  delay  involved  in  getting  the 
sanction  of   a  Board  to  every  little  detail  of  business,  and 


4o8  Contemporary  Socialisfn. 

sometimes  by  a  difficulty  which  we  find  also  shattering  similar 
experiments  in  France,  that  men  were  raised  to  the  Committee 
by  their  gifts  of  persuasion  rather  than  their  gifts  of  adminis- 
tration. Well-meaning  persons,  with  a  great  itch  for  managing 
things,  and  a  great  turn  for  bungling  them,  for  whom  there  is, 
under  the  present  order  of  society,  a  considerable  safety-valve 
in  philanthropy,  contrive  in  a  socialistic  community  to  get 
appointed  on  the  Council  of  Industry,  and  play  sad  havoc 
with  the  common  good.  While  they  preached  and  wasted, 
the  really  practical  men  who,  with  better  power  of  talk,  might 
have  confounded  them,  could  only  sulk  and  grumble,  and 
eventually  lost  heart  in  their  work,  and  all  interest  and  con- 
fidence in  the  concern.  This  had  much  to  do,  according  to 
Mr.  Meeker,  an  old  Fourierist,  with  the  ruin  of  the  North 
American  Phalanx,  one  of  the  most  important  of  the  trans- 
atlantic experiments,  and  it  was  the  main  cause  apparently 
of  the  downfall  of  the  community  of  Coxsackie — "  They  had 
many  persons  engaged  in  talking  and  law-making  who  did 
not  work  at  any  useful  employment ;  the  consequences  were 
that  after  struggling  on  for  between  one  and  two  years  the 
experiment  came  to  an  end."  A  socialist  State  would  prob- 
ably have  as  many  difficulties  with  this  bustling  but  unsatis- 
factory class  of  persons  as  a  socialist  Phalanx,  nor  would  the 
evils  of  divided  counsels  and  departmental  delays  be  a  whit 
milder ;  and  the  extension  of  State  management  to  branches 
of  work  for  which  it  had  not  otherwise  some  sort  of  special 
natural  qualification  would  have  the  same  kind  of  ruinous 
operation. 

In  spirit  and  effect,  therefore,  as  may  be  palpably  seen  from 
these  actual  experiments,  the  equalizing  institutions  of  socialism 
stand  quite  apart  from  the  very  restricted  use  of  State  manage- 
ment and  the  remedial  or  invigorating  legislation  that  a  sound 
social  policy  prescribes.  When  England  is  accused  of  heading 
the  nations  in  the  race  of  State  socialism,  because  England  has 
nationalized  the  post  and  telegraph  service,  and  passed  a  series 
of  factory  and  agrarian  Acts  for  the  protection  of  the  weaker 
classes  of  the  people,  the  accusation  is  made  without  proper  dis- 
crimination. It  is  not  the  frequency  of  the  intervention,  but 
its  purpose  and  consequences  that  make  it  socialistic.     If  the 


State  Socialism.  409 

post  is  better  managed  by  the  State  than  by  private  initiative, 
if  the  factory  and  agrarian  laws  merely  reinstate  weaker  classes 
in  the  conditions  essential  for  a  normal  human  life,  and  neither 
seek  nor  produce  that  equalization  of  the  differences  of  fortune 
or  skill  which  is  fatal  to  any  high  and  progressive  general  level 
of  comfort,  then  there  is  no  State  socialism  in  it  at  all.  State 
management  is  not  pushed  beyond  the  limit  of  efficiency,  nor 
popular  rights  beyond  the  positive  claims  of  social  justice.  Let 
us  go  a  little  further  into  detail. 

IV.  State  Socialism  and  State  Management. 

What  are  the  conditions  of  efficient  State  administration  ? 
The  State  possesses  several  natural  characteristics  which  give 
it  a  decided  advantage  as  an  industrial  manager,  some  for  one 
branch  of  work,  some  for  another.  It  has  stability,  it  has  per- 
manency, and  it  has — what  is  perhaps  its  principal  industrial 
superiority — unrivalled  power  of  securing  unity  of  administra- 
tion, since  it  is  the  only  agency  that  can  use  force  for  the  pur- 
pose. On  the  other  hand,  it  has  one  great  natural  defect,  its 
want  of  a  personal  stake  in  the  produce  of  the  business  it  con- 
ducts, its  want  of  that  keen  check  on  waste  and  that  pushing 
incentive  to  exertion  which  private  undertakings  enjoy  in  the 
eye  and  energy  of  the  master.  This  is  the  great  taproot  from 
which  all  the  usual  faults  of  Government  management  spring 
— its  routine,  red-tape  spirit,  its  sluggishness  in  noting  changes 
in  the  market,  in  adapting  itself  to  changes  in  the  public  taste, 
and  in  introducing  improved  methods  of  production.  Govern- 
ment servants  may  very  generally  be  men  of  a  higher  stamp 
and  training  than  the  servants  of  a  priva^te  company,  but  they 
are  proverbial,  on  the  one  hand,  for  a  certain  lofty  disdain  of 
the  humble  but  valuable  virtue  of  parsimony,  and,  on  the  other, 
for  an  unprogressive,  unenterprising,  uninventive  administra- 
tion of  business. 

Now  the  branches  of  industry  which  the  State  is  fitted  to 
carry  on  are  of  course  those  in  which  its  great  fault  happens 
to  have  small  scope  for  play,  and  in  which  its  great  merit 
or  merits  have  great  scope  for  play  ;  those,  for  example,  which 
gain  largely  in  efficiency  or  economy  by  a  centralized  ad  minis- 


4IO  Contemporary  Socialism. 

tration,  and  suffer  little  harm  comparatively  from  a  routine 
one.  That  is  the  reason  Governments  always  manage  the 
postal  service  well.  In  post-office  work  the  specific  industrial 
superiority  of  Government  carries  its  maximum  of  advantage, 
and  its  specific  industrial  defect  does  its  minimum  of  injury. 
The  carrying  and  delivery  of  letters  from  one  part  of  the 
empire  to  another  require,  for  efficiency,  a  single  co-ordinated 
system,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  those  operations  themselves  are 
of  so  unvariable  and  routine  a  character  that  little  harm  is  done 
by  their  being  carried  on  in  a  routine  spirit ;  they  involve  so 
little  capital  expenditure — the  entire  capital  of  the  department 
in  England  is  only  £80,000 — that  the  opportunity  for  waste  and 
corruption  is  slight ;  and  being  conducted  much  more  largely 
under  the  public  eye  than  the  affairs  of  other  departments  of 
State,  they  are  consequently  subject  to  the  constant  and  inter- 
ested criticism  of  the  people  whose  wants  they  are  meant  to 
satisfy.  The  same  reason  explains  why  Government  dockyards 
and  arms  factories  are  always  managed  so  unsatisfactorily. 
There  is,  on  the  one  hand,  no  need  in  them  for  any  higher  unity 
of  administration  than  is  wanted  in  any  ordinary  single  busi- 
ness establishment ;  but,  on  the  other,  progressiveness  and 
adaptability  are  of  the  first  moment,  routine  and  obstruction 
to  improvement  being  indeed  among  their  worst  dangers. 
Then  the  risk  of  prodigality  and  corruption  is  high,  for  their 
capital  expenditure  is  great,  and  the  check  of  pubUc  criticism 
very  distant  and  ineffectual.  So  exceptional  a  business  is  the 
post,  that  the  telegraphs,  though  managed  by  the  same  depart- 
ment, have  never  bean  managed  with  the  same  success.  They 
were  bought  at  first  at  a  ransom,  they  have  involved  an  in- 
creasing loss  nearly  ever  since,  and  the  public  have  to  pay 
practically  as  much  for  their  telegrams — perhaps  more — than 
the  public  of  the  United  States  pay  to  their  telegraph  companies. 
Even  in  the  postal  department.  Government  administration 
shows  the  usual  official  slowness  in  adopting  much-needed  and 
even  lucrative  reforms.  Of  this,  a  good  example  occurred  only 
the  other  day.  It  was  not  until  a  Bo^^s'  Messenger  Company 
was  already  in  the  field  and  doing  the  work,  that  the  Post- 
master-General was  brought  to  recognise,  as  he  said,  "  the 
desirability  of  providing  a  more  rapid  means  of  transmitting 


State  Socialism.  411 

single  letters  for  short  distances  and  under  special  circum- 
stances than  at  present  exists," 

It  ought  of  course  to  be  acknowledged  that  State  management 
in  England  is  tried  under  the  veiy  worst  possible  conditions, 
inasmuch  as  it  is  tied  to  the  fortunes  and  exigencies  of  political 
party.  No  business  could  be  expected  to  thrive  where  the 
supreme  control  is  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  good  parliamentary 
debater,  who  knows  nothing  about  the  special  work  of  the 
department  he  undertakes  ;  where,  even  at  that,  this  inexperi- 
enced hand  is  changed  for  another  inexperienced  hand  every 
three  or  four  years  ;  where  policy  shifts  without  continuity,  to 
dodge  the  popular  breeze  of  to-day,  or  to  catch  the  popular 
breeze  of  to-morrow  ;  and  where  the  actual  incumbent  of  office, 
is  always  able  to  evade  censure  by  throwing  the  responsibility 
on  his  predecessors,  who  are  out  of  office.  Well  may  a  saga- 
cious man  like  Mr.  Samuel  Laing,  with  large  experience  of 
administration  both  in  the  aifairs  of  State  and  of  private  com- 
panies, exclaim :  "I  often  think  what  the  result  would  be  if 
the  railway  companies  managed  their  affairs  on  the  same 
principles  as  the  nation  applies  to  its  naval  and  military  expen- 
diture. Suppose  the  Brighton  Board  were  turned  out  every 
three  years,  and  a  new  Board  came  in  with  new  views  and  a 
new  policy,  and  new  men  at  the  head  of  the  locomotive,  traffic, 
and  other  spending  departments,  how  long  would  it  be  before 
expenses  went  up  and  dividends  down  ?  "  If  State  management 
is  to  succeed — if  it  is  to  have  fair  play — it  must  be  entirely 
divorced  from  party  fortunes,  while  subject,  of  course,  to  the 
criticism  of  Parhament,  under  some  system  Hke  that  adopted 
in  Victoria  for  the  management  of  the  railways.  In  such 
circumstances  the  question  of  the  advisabihty  of  Government 
assuming  the  management  of  any  industry,  is  a  question  of 
balancing  the  probable  gains  from  the  greater  unity  of  the 
administration  against  the  probable  losses  from  its  greater 
inertia. 

There  are  some  exceptional  branches  of  industry  in  which 
Government  does  better  than  private  persons,  because  private 
persons  have  too  little  interest  to  do  the  work  well,  or  even  to 
do  it  at  all,  and  there  are  others  in  which  the  State's  very  want 
of  personal  interest  is  its  advantage  instead  of  its  drawback. 


412  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Forestry  is  the  best  example  of  the  first  sort.  One  generation 
must  plant,  and  another  cut  down,  so  that  the  present  owner  is 
often  unwilling  to  incur  the  expense  of  a  speculation  of  which 
he  is  unlikely  to  live  to  reap  the  fruits  ;  but  the  natural  per- 
manence of  the  State  leads  it  to  do  more  justice  to  this  import- 
ant branch  of  production,  and  experience  everywhere  shows 
that  State  forests  are  more  productive  than  private  ones.  In 
Prussia  and  Belgium  they  are  nearly  twice  as  productive.  The 
average  annual  produce  of  aU  forests  in  Prussia  (including 
State  forests)  is  0*36  thaler  per  Morgen,  but  the  produce  of 
State  forests  alone  is  0*66  thaler  per  Morgen.  In  Belgium  the 
produce  of  all  forests  is  19'33  francs  per  hectare,  and  of  State 
forests  34'42  francs.*  The  erection  of  lighthouses  is  also  a 
public  service,  which  falls  to  the  State  because  of  individual 
inability ;  it  cannot  be  undertaken  in  any  way  to  make  it  re- 
munerative to  private  adventurers. 

The  best  example  of  an  industrial  work  for  which  the  State's 
want  of  personal  interest  is  its  advantage  is  the  Mint.  Nobody 
would  trust  the  stamp  of  a  private  assayer  as  he  trusts  the 
stamp  of  the  Government,  because  the  private  assayer  could 
never  succeed  in  placing  his  personal  disinterestedness  so  abso- 
lutely above  the  suspicion  of  fraud.  The  policy  of  the  official 
attestation  of  the  quality  of  commodities  is  often  disputed  on 
the  ground  that  it  discourages  improvement  above  the  pass 
standard,  but  it  is  never  doubted  that  if  a  brand  is  wanted,  the 
brand  to  command  most  confidence  is  the  brand  of  the  Crown. 
Our  own  Government,  out  of  the  infinity  of  commodities  ofiered 
for  sale,  attests  none  but  six — butter,  herrings,  plate,  gun  bar- 
rels, chains,  and  anchors — articles  in  which  the  dangers  of 
deterioration  probably  exceed  the  chances  of  improvement,  and 
in  the  case  of  some  of  these  six  there  is  a  strong  feeling  abroad 
that  the  State's  intervention  is  doing  more  harm  than  good. 
Scotch  herrings  have  sujGfered  lately  in  the  German  markets, 
because  they  were  worse  cured  than  the  Norwegian,  and  the 
herring  brand  was  blamed  for  the  unprogressiveness  of  the 
cure.  This  class  of  interventions,  therefore,  is  neither  numerous 
now,  nor  likely  to  become  very  numerous  in  the  future. 

•  Roscher's  "  Finanz- Wissenschaft,"  p.  63. 


State  Socialism.  413 

A-  more  important  class  of  undertakings  in  wliich  the  State's 
industrial  advantage  lies  in  its  superiority  to  the  temptations 
of  self-interest,  is  that  of  industries  which  naturally  assume 
something  of  the  character  of  a  monopoly,  and  in  which  self- 
interest  lacks  both  the  check  on  its  rapacity,  and  the  spur  to 
its  activity  supplied  b}-  effective  competition.  It  is  true  of 
more  things  than  railways  that  when  combination  is  possible, 
competition  is  impossible,  and  the  growth  of  syndicates,  trusts 
and  pooling  arrangements  at  the  present  day  has  led  to  con- 
siderable agitation  for  State  interference,  especially  in  the 
case  of  commodities  like  salt  and  coal,  which  are  necessaries  of 
life.  Our  experience  of  these  things  is  as  yet  Umited,  but  so 
far  as  it  has  gone  it  seems  to  show  that  the  public  dangers 
dreaded  from  them  are  apt  to  be  exaggerated.  The  combina- 
tions fear  to  raise  the  price  to  the  public  so  high  as  to  provoke 
competition,  and  in  most  cases  in  America  have  not  raised  it  at 
all,  drawing  their  advantage  rather  from  the  reduction  in  ex- 
pense of  management,  and  the  saving  of  capital ;  and  the 
State  would  not  be  likely  to  manage  industries  producing  for 
the  markets  any  better  than,  or  even  so  well  as,  the  more 
keenly  interested  board  of  private  directors.  But  if  the  balance 
of  evidence  seems  against  public  management  in  this  class  of 
monopohes,  it  stands,  I  think,  decidedly  in  favour  of  public 
management  in  another  and  not  unimportant  class.  The  gas 
and  water  supply  of  towns  is  a  monopoly,  and  though  the 
point  is  not  undisputed,  it  appears  to  answer  better  on  the 
whole  in  public  than  in  private  hands,  because  the  manage- 
ment has  no  interest  to  serve  except  the  interest  of  the  public. 
Experience  has  not  been  everywhere  the  same,  but  usually  it 
has  been  that  under  municipal  control  the  quality  of  the  gas 
has  been  improved  and  the  price  reduced.  But  this  is  muni- 
cipal management  of  course,  not  State  management,  and  the 
difference  is  material,  inasmuch  as  municipal  management,  in 
the  case  of  gas  and  water  supply,  is  the  management  of  the 
production  of  things  of  general  consumption  under  the  direct 
control  of  the  very  people  who  consume  them,  so  that  it  is  con- 
stantly' exposed  to  effective  public  criticism,  perhaps  as  good  a 
substitute  as  things  admit  of  for  the  eye  of  the  master.  The 
natural  defect  of  public  management  is  so  mitigated  by  this 


414  Contemporary  Socialism. 

circumstance,  that  probably  of  all  forms  of  public  management, 
municipal  management  is  the  best,  and  when  applied  to 
branches  of  production  that  tend  to  become  monopolies  at  any 
rate,  it  answers  well.  The  question  is  entirely  different  with 
proposals  that  are  sometimes  made  for  converting  into  muni- 
cipal monopolies  branches  of  production — such,  for  example,  as 
the  bread  supply  of  the  community — which  are  carried  on  by 
individual  management  under  effective  competition.  To  do 
as  well  as  joint-stock  management  uncontrolled  by  competition 
is  one  thing ;  to  do  as  well  as  individual  management  subject 
to  competition  is  another  ;  and  so  long  as  public  management 
replaces  nothing  but  the  former  class  of  enterprises,  which  are 
in  any  case  a  sort  of  natural  monoplies,  it  will  never  contract 
the  vast  field  of  individual  enterprise  to  any  very  serious 
extent. 

"When  we  pass  from  municipal  monopolies  to  State  monopo- 
lies, the  problem  becomes  more  grave.  The  two  largest  current 
proposals  of  this  kind  are  those  of  land  nationalization  and  rail- 
way nationalization.  The  former  proposal,  though  much  more 
noisily  advocated  than  the  other,  has  incomparably  the  weaker 
case.  For  apart  altogether  from  the  mischief  of  making  every 
rent  settlement  a  political  question,  and  looking  at  the  matter 
merely  in  its  economic  aspect,  land,  of  all  things,  is  that  which 
is  least  suited  for  centralized  administration,  and  yields  its  best 
results  under  the  minute  concentrated  supervision  of  individual 
and  occupying  ownership.  The  magic  of  property  is  now  a 
proverbial  phrase ;  it  is  truer  of  land  than  anything  else,  and  it 
merely  means  that  for  land  interested  administration  is  every- 
thing, comprehensive  administration  nothing,  that  the  zeal  of 
the  resident  owner  to  improve  his  own  land  knows  no  limit, 
whereas  the  obstructive  forces  of  routine  and  official  inertia 
have  nowhere  more  power  to  blight  than  in  land  management. 
In  Adam  Smith's  time,  as  he  mentions  in  the  "  "Wealth  of 
Nations,"  the  Crown  lands  were  everywhere  the  least  produc- 
tive lands  in  their  respective  countries,  and  the  experience  is  the 
same  still.  It  is  so  even  in  Prussia,  in  spite  of  its  economical 
and  skilled  bureaucracy.  Professor  Roscher  says  it  is  a  com- 
mon remark  in  Germany  that  Crown  lands  sell  for  a  greater 
number  of  years'  purchase  than  other  lands,  because  they  are 


State  Socialism.  415 

known  to  be  less  improved,  and  are  therefore  expected  to  yield 
better  results  to  the  energj^  of  the  purchaser,  and  he  quotes 
official  figures  for  1857,  showing  that  the  domain  land  of  Prus- 
sia had  not  risen  in  value  so  much  as  the  other  land  in  the 
country.  Great  expectations  are  often  entertained  from  the 
unearned  increment,  though  there  is  not  likely  to  be  much  of 
that  in  agricultural  land  for  years  to  come  ;  but  what  is  a  much 
more  important  consideration  for  the  community  is  the  earned 
increment,  and  under  State  management  the  earned  increment 
would  infallibly  decline.  Of  course,  this  does  not  exclude  the 
necessity  of  strict  State  control,  so  far  as  required  by  justice, 
humanity,  and  the  growth  and  comfort  of  the  general  commu- 
nity. Under  land  nationalization  here  I  have  not  considered 
schemes  which  do  not  give  the  State  any  real  ownership  in  the 
land  more  than  it  at  present  enjoys,  or,  at  any  rate,  place  no 
real  management  of  the  land  in  its  hands.  The  rival  schemes 
of  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace  and  Mr.  Henry  George  are  really  only 
more  or  less  objectionable  methods  of  increasing  the  land-tax. 

The  question  of  a  State  railway  is  not  so  easily  determined. 
There  are  certainly  few  branches  of  business  where  unity  of 
administration  is  more  advantageous,  or  where  the  public  would 
benefit  more  from  affairs  being  conducted  from  the  pubhc 
point  of  view  of  developing  the  greatest  amount  of  gross  traffic, 
instead  of  from  the  private  point  of  view  of  making  the  greatest 
amount  of  net  profit.  A  railway  differs  from  other  enterprises, 
because  it  affects  all  others  very  seriously  for  good  or  ill ;  it 
may  for  the  sake  of  more  profit  give  preferences  that  are  hurt- 
ful to  industrial  development,  or  deny  facilities  that  are  essen- 
tial to  it.  A  private  company  may  find  it  more  profitable  to 
carry  a  less  quantity  at  a  high  rate  than  a  greater  quantity  at 
a  low,  and  it  cannot  be  expected  to  run  a  line  that  does  not  pay, 
though  the  general  community  might  benefit  greatly  more  by 
the  increase  of  traffic  which  the  line  creates  than  covers  the 
loss  incurred  by  running  it.  Now  it  is  impossible  to  exagger- 
ate the  importance  of  having  a  public  work  like  a  railway, 
which  can  help  or  hinder  every  trade  in  the  land,  conducted 
from  a  public  point  of  view  instead  of  a  private,  and  the  pre- 
sent discussion  in  this  country  on  rates  and  fares  points  to  the 
desirability  of  changes  to  which  private  companies  are  not 


41 6  Couteviporary  Socialism. 

likely  to  resort  of  their  own  accord,  nor  tlie  railwaj^  commis- 
sion to  be  able  to  compel  tbem.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
equally  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  risks  of  the  undertaking. 
The  post  office,  with  its  capital  of  £80,000,  is  a  plaything  to  the 
railways  with  their  capital  of  £800,000,000,  and  their  revenue 
little  short  of  that  of  the  State  itself.  The  operations  are  of 
a  most  varied  nature,  and  only  some  of  them  could  be  exposed 
to  effective  criticism.  The  mere  transaction  of  purchase  excites 
in  many  minds  a  not  unreasonable  fear.  If  Government  made 
a  bad  bargain  with  the  telegraph  companies,  it  would  be  sure 
to  make  a  worse  with  the  railway  companies,  who  are  fifty 
times  more  powerful ;  and  besides,  it  would  very  likely  have  to 
borrow  its  money  at  a  higher  figure,  for  though  it  could  borrow 
two  millions  at  3  per  cent.,  it  could  not  therefore  borrow  eight 
hundred  millions,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  number  of  people 
who  wants  per  cent,  is  limited,  most  holders  of  stock  preferring 
investments  which,  though  more  risky,  offer  a  prospect  of  more 
gain.  If  in  trying  to  balance  these  weighty  ^j?'OS  and  equally 
weighty  cons  one  turns  to  the  experience  of  State  railways,  he 
will  find  that  as  yet  it  affords  few  very  sure  or  decisive  data, 
because  it  varies  in  the  different  countries  and  times,  and  has 
been  very  differently  interpreted. 

Of  the  Continental  State  railways,  those  of  Belgium  and 
Germany  are  usually  counted  the  most  favourable  examples. 
But  Mr.  Hadley,  in  his  excellent  work  on  Railwaj^  Transporta- 
tion" shows  that  the  State  lines  of  Belgium  were  conducted  in 
an  extremely  slovenly,  perfunctory  way  until  1853,  when  pri- 
vate Unes  began  to  increase  and  compete  with  them,  and  that 
though  the  low  rates  which  this  competition  was  the  means 
of  introducing  still  remain  after  the  private  lines  have  been 
largely  bought  out,  there  has  been,  on  the  other  hand,  latterly 
a  decline  in  the  profits  of  the  State  system,  an  increasing  ten- 
dency to  slackness  and  inertia  in  the  management,  and  growing 
complaints  of  creating  posts  to  reward  political  services,  and 
manipulating  accounts  to  suit  Government  exigencies.  In 
Germany  the  rates  are  certainly  low  and  the  management 
economical,  but  complaints  are  made  that  less  is  done  for  the 
encouragement  of  the  national  resources,  and  unprofitable 
traffic  is  more  severely  declined  than  by  the  private  railways. 


State   Socialism.  417 

On  the  whole,  probably  the  best  State  railway  sj'^stem  is  that 
of  Victoria ;  charging  low  rates,  self-supporting,  offering  every 
encouragement  to  industrial  development ;  and  the  opinion  of 
England  will  probably  be  largely  determined  by  further 
observation  of  that  experiment. 

The  sister  colony  of  New  Zealand  has  made  a  successful 
experiment  in  another  department  of  industrial  enterprise,  life 
insurance,  for  which  Government  management  indeed  is  highly 
adapted,  because,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  a  business  in  which 
absolute  security  is  of  the  last  consequence,  and  there  is  no 
security  like  Government  guarantee  ;  and  in  the  second,  it  is  a 
business  in  which  the  calculations  of  the  whole  administration 
are  virtually  matters  of  mechanical  routine.  The  Government 
office  was  only  opened  in  1871,  under  the  influence  of  a  wide- 
spread distrust  of  private  offices,  caused  by  recent  bankruptcies, 
and  it  now  transacts  one-third  of  the  life  insurance  business  of 
the  colony  ;  it  has  probably  tended  to  encourage  life  insurance, 
for  while  there  are  only  26  policies  per  1000  of  population  in 
the  United  Kingdom,  there  are  80  per  1000  in  New  Zealand, 
and  its  management  is  much  cheaper  than  that  of  any  other 
insurance  company  in  the  colony,  except  the  Australian  United. 
The  proportion  of  expenses  to  revenue  in  •  the  Australian 
United  is  13'66  per  cent.,  in  the  Government  Office  17"23,  and 
in  none  of  the  other  companies  (whose  gross  business,  however, 
is  much  smaller)  is  it  under  43*02. 

Adam  Smith  thought  there  were  only  four  branches  of 
enterprise  which  were  fitted  to  be  profitably  conducted  by  a 
joint-stock  company.  We  have  seen  .in  our  day  almost  every 
branch  of  industry  conducted  by  such  companies,  and  an  idea 
is  often  expressed  that  whatever  a  joint-stock  company  can  do, 
Government  can  do  at  least  quite  as  well,  because  the  defect 
of  both  is  the  same.  The  defect  is  the  same,  but  Government 
has  it  in  larger  measure.  Joint-stock  management  is  certainly 
much  less  productive  in  most  industries  than  private  manage- 
ment. The  Report  of  the  Massachusetts  Labour  Bureau  for 
1878  contains  some  curious  statistics  on  the  subject.  There 
were  then  in  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts,  10,395 
private  manufacturing  establishments,  employing  in  all  166,583 
persons,   and  520   joint-stock    manufacturing  establishment  r, 

E    E 


41 8  Contemporary  Socialism. 

employing  101,337  persons,  and  the  private  establishments, 
while  they  paid  a  much  higher  average  rate  of  wages  than  the 
joint-stock,  produced  at  the  same  time  not  far  from  twice  as 
much  for  the  capital  invested.  The  average  wages  per  head  in 
the  private  establishments  was  474'37  dollars  a  year,  and  in  the 
joint-stock  was  383-47  dollars  a  year  ;  while  the  produce  per 
dollar  of  capital  was  2'58  dollars'  worth  in  the  private,  and  1'37 
dollars'  worth  in  the  joint-stock,  and  though  part  of  this  differ- 
ence is  attributed  to  the  circumstance  that  private  manufac- 
turers sometimes  hire  their  factories  and  companies  do  not,  the 
substance  of  it  is  believed  to  be  due  to  the  inferiority  of  the 
joint-stock  management.  Anyhow,  that  circumstance  could 
have  no  influence  in  producing  the  very  marked  difference  in 
the  wages  given  by  the  two  classes  of  enterprise,  and  the 
higher  wages  would  not,  and  could  not,  be  given  unless  the  pro- 
duction was  higher.  If  all  the  industries  of  the  country,  then, 
were  put  under  joint-stock  management,  the  result  would  be  (1)  a 
general  reduction  in  the  amount  produced,  and  (2)  a  consequent 
reduction  in  the  general  remuneration  of  the  working  classes, 
and  the  general  level  of  natural  comfort ;  and  the  result  would 
be  still  worse  under  universal  Government  management.  One 
of  the  labourer's  greatest  interests  is  efficient  management,  and 
if  he  suffers  from  the  replacement  of  individual  employers  by 
joint-stock  companies,  he  would  suffer  much  more  by  the  re- 
placement of  both  by  the  State,  excepting  only  in  those  few 
departments  of  business  for  which  the  State  happens  to  possess 
peculiar  advantages  and  aptitude. 

V.  Btate  Socialism  and  Popular  Right. 

The  limits  of  the  legitimate  intervention  of  the  public 
authority  with  respect  to  the  moral  development  of  the  com- 
munity are  prescribed  by  a  dijGferent  rule  from  those  with 
respect  to  its  material  development.  Efficiency  is  still,  indeed, 
a  governing  consideration,  for  perhaps  more  measures  for 
popular  improvement  fail  from  sheer  ineffectuality  than  from 
any  other  reason.  The  history  of  social  reform  is  strewn  thick 
with  these  dead-letter  measures.  There  is  a  cry  and  a  lamenta- 
tion, and  a  feeling  that  something  must  be  done ;  and  an  Act 


Slaie  Socialism.  419 

of  Parliament  is  passed  containing  injunctions  which  no  Act 
of  Pariiament  can  enforce,  or  which  address  themselves  to  mere 
accidental  cii'cumstances,  and  leave  the  real  causes  of  the  evil 
entirely  unaffected.  And  there  would  be  no  impropriety  in 
describing  impracticable  or  ill-directed  legislation  of  this  kind 
as  being  socialistic,  for,  besides  the  old  association  of  socialism 
with  impracticable  schemes,  impracticable  legislation  is  always 
unjust  legislation,  and  unjust  legislation  for  behoof  of  the 
labouring  class  is  essentially  socialistic.  Every  State  inter- 
ference necessarily  involves  a  certain  restriction  of  the  liberty 
or  other  general  rights  of  some  class  of  persons  ;  and  although 
this  restriction  would  be  perfectly  justifiable  if  it  actually 
secured  the  prior  or  more  urgent  right  of  another  and  perhaps 
much  more  numerous  class  of  persons,  it  is  injustice,  and 
nothing  but  injustice,  when  it  merely  hurts  the  former  class 
without  doing  any  good  to  the  latter.  It  may  hurt  both 
classes  even — well-meaning  meddling  often  does ;  but  what  I 
desire  to  bring  out  here  is  that  labour  legislation,  which  may 
have  been  entirely  just  and  free  from  socialism  in  its  intention, 
may  be  unjust  and  full  of  socialism  in  its  result.  We  may 
therefore,  without  any  fault,  include  under  the  head  of  State 
socialism  that  common  sort  of  proposal  which,  without  urging 
any  wrong  claim,  merely  asks  the  State  to  do  the  wrong  thing 
— to  do  either  something  it  cannot  do  at  all,  or  something  that 
will  not  answer  the  purpose  intended.  It  is  socialistic  not 
because  it  is  impracticable,  but  because  it  is  unjust. 

Since  well-meant  legislation  may  thus  become  urgent,  and 
therefore  socialistic  for  want  of  result,  it  is  plain  that  the 
efficiency  of  the  intervention  is  a  very  important  consideration 
in  determining  the  State's  duty  with  respect  to  popular  rights. 
But  the  primary  consideration  here  is  the  extent  of  the  moral 
claim  which  the  individual,  by  reason  of  his  weakness,  has  upon 
the  resources  of  society,  and  it  is  upon  that  consideration  that 
the  division  of  conflicting  political  theories  on  the  subject  turns. 
All  the  several  theories  are  agreed  that  the  enlargement  of 
popular  rights,  when  the  enlargement  is  required  by  a  just 
popular  claim,  is  entirely  within  the  proper  and  natural  pro- 
vince of  the  State ;  where  they  differ,  and  differ  seriously,  is 
partly  in  their  views  of  the  justice  of  particular  elements  in 


420  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  popular  claim  of  the  time  being,  but  more  especially  in 
their  whole  conception  of  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  popular 
claim  in  general.  There  are  still  some  persons  to  be  found 
contending  that  there  are  no  such  things  as  natural  rights,  and 
there  are  plenty  who  cannot  hear  the  words  without  a  sensa- 
tion of  alarm.  But  it  is  now  generally  admitted,  even  by  those 
who  adopt  the  narrowest  political  theories,  that  legal  rights 
are  merely  the  ratification  of  moral  rights  already  existing,  and 
that  the  creation  of  new  legal  rights  for  securing  the  just 
aspirations  of  ill-protected  classes  of  the  people  belongs  to  the 
ordinary  daily  duties  of  ail  civil  government.  Mr.  Spencer 
very  readily  admits  that  some  of  the  latest  constituted  rights 
in  this  country — the  new  seamen's  right  of  the  Merchant 
Shipping  Act,  and  the  new  women's  right  of  the  Married 
"Women's  Property  Act — are  perfectly  justifiable  for  the  pre- 
vention in  the  one  case  of  seamen  being  fraudulently  betraj^ed 
into  unseaworthy  ships,  and  in  the  other  of  women  being 
robbed  of  their  own  personal  earnings.  But  then  the  new 
rights  which  he  would  most  condemn — the  right  to  public 
assistance,  the  right  to  education,  the  right  to  a  habitable 
dwelling,  the  right  to  a  fair  rent — are  quite  as  susceptible  of 
justification  on  the  ground  of  natural  justice  as  either  the  right 
to  a  seaworthy  ship  or  the  right  to  one's  own  earnings.  Mr. 
Spencer's  theory  errs  by  unduly  contracting  men's  natural 
claim.  They  have  a  right  to  more  than  equal  freedom ;  they 
have  a  right,  to  use  Smith's  phrase,  to  an  undeformed  and 
unmutilated  humanity,  to  that  original  basis  of  human  dignity 
which  it  is  the  business  of  organized  society  to  defend  for  its 
weaker  members  against  the  assaults  of  fortune  as  well  as  the 
assaults  of  men.  That  is  what  I  have  called,  for  the  sabe  of 
distinction,  the  English  theory  of  social  politics.  On  the  other 
hand,  socialism  unduly  extends  this  claim.  The  right  to  fair 
wages  is  one  thing ;  the  State  could  not  realize  it,  but  it  at 
least  represents  no  unjust  aspiration ;  but  the  right  to  an  equal 
dividend  of  the  national  income,  claimed  by  Utopian  socialists, 
including  Mr.  Bellamy  at  the  present  day,  and  the  right  to  the 
full  produce  of  labour  claimed  by  the  revolutionary  socialists, 
and  meaning,  as  explained  by  them,  the  right  to  the  entire 
product  of  labour  and   capital  together,  are  really  rights  to 


State  Socialism.  421 

unfair  \\^ages,  and  the  whole  objection  to  them  is  that  they  are 
at  variance  with  social  justice.  If  we  keep  these  distinctions 
in  view,  we  shall  be  able  to  discriminate  between  interventions 
of  authority  which  are  innocent,  and  interventions  which  are 
tainted  with  State  socialism.  Take  an  illustration  or  two,  1st, 
of  interventions  for  settling  the  claims  of  the  poor  in  society  in 
general,  and  2nd,  of  interventions  for  adjusting  the  differences 
between  one  class  and  another,  between  employer  and  labourer, 
between  landlord  and  tenant,  and  the  like. 

1.  Under  the  first  head,  the  most  important  question  is  the 
question  of  pubKc  assistance.  Prince  Bismarck  created  a  con- 
siderable European  sensation  when  he  first  announced  his  new 
social  policy  in  1884,  by  declaring  in  favour  of  the  three  claims 
of  labour,  which  have  been  so  commonly  regarded  as  the  very 
alpha  and  omega  of  social  revolution — the  right  to  existence 
for  the  infirm,  the  right  to  labour  for  the  able-bodied,  and  the 
right  to  superannuation  for  the  aged.  "  Give  the  labourer," 
he  said,  "  the  right  to  labour  when  he  is  able-bodied ;  give 
him  the  right  to  relief  when  he  is  sick ;  give  him  the  right  to 
maintenance  when  he  is  old  ;  and  if  you  do  so — if  you  do  not 
shrink  from  the  sacrifice,  and  do  not  cry  out  about  State 
socialism  whenever  the  State  does  anything  for  the  labourer 
in  the  way  of  Christian  charity — then  I  believe  you  will  destroy 
the  charm  of  the  "Wyden  (i.e..  Social  Democratic)  programme." 
These  three  rights  are  reall}'  two,  the  right  of  relief  when  one 
is  sick  and  of  maintenance  when  one  is  old  being  only  different 
phases  of  the  right  to  existence.  Now  the  right  to  existence 
and  the  right  to  labour  are  in  themselves  both  perfectly  just 
claims,  but  the  construction  Prince  Bismarck  gave  them  passed 
decidedly  over  into  State  socialism. 

The  right  to  existence  is  seldom  called  in  question.  Malthus, 
it  is  true,  said  a  man  had  a  right  to  live  only  as  he  had  a  right 
to  live  a  hundred  years — if  lie  could.  He  might  as  well  have 
argued  that  a  man  had  a  right  to  escape  murder  only  as  he 
had  a  right  to  escape  murder  for  a  hundred  years — if  he  could. 
It  is  really  because  he  cannot  that  he  has  the  right — it  is  be- 
cause he  cannot  protect  himself  against  violence  that  he  has 
a  right  to  protection  from  the  State,  and  because,  and  as  far  as, 
he  cannot  protect  himself  against  starvation  that  he  has  a  just 


422  Contemporary  Socialism. 

claim  upon  the  State  for  food.  And  his  claim  is  obviously 
bounded  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other  by  the  ability  of  society. 
If  society  cannot  protect  him,  it  is  of  course  absurd  to  talk  of 
any  right  to  its  protection,  but  if  society  can,  society  ought. 
To  suffer  a  fellow-citizen  to  die  of  hunger  is  felt  by  a  civilized 
community  to  be  at  least  as  just  a  disgrace  to  its  government 
as  it  would  be  to  leave  him  a  prey  to  the  knife  of  the  assassin, 
or  to  the  incursions  of  marauders  from  over  the  enemy's  border. 
But  as  the  State  furnishes  protection  against  human  violence 
by  its  courts  of  justice,  and  against  disease  by  its  sanitary  laws, 
so  it  furnishes  protection  against  famine  and  indigence  by  its 
legal  provision  of  relief.  The  claim  of  the  perishing  stands  on 
the  same  footing  as  any  other  claim  which  is  an  admitted  right 
of  man  to-day  ;  it  is  a  claim  to  an  essential  condition  of  normal 
manhood — to  existence  itself.  But  then,  if  the  right  to  exist- 
ence must  be  admitted,  it  can  only  be  admitted  where  the 
individual  is,  for  whatever  reason,  unable  to  make  provision 
for  himself,  and  it  can  only  be  admitted  in  such  measure  and 
form  as  will  not  discourage  other  individuals  from  trying  to 
make  independent  provision  for  themselves  before  their  day 
of  disability  comes,  because  that,  in  turn,  is  the  way  prescribed 
by  normal  manhood  and  true  human  dignity. 

What  State  socialists  claim,  however,  is  not  the  right  to 
existence,  but  the  right  to  decent  and  comfortable  existence — 
the  right  to  the  style  of  living  which  is  customary  among  the 
independent  poor.  The  labourer  ought,  in  their  eyes,  to  be 
treated  as  a  public  servant,  and  his  sick  pay  and  his  pension 
ought  both  to  be  commensurate  with  the  claims  and  dignity 
of  honest  labour.  Now  it  is  of  course  impossible  not  to  sym- 
pathize much  with  this  view,  but  the  difficulty  is  that  if  you 
make  assisted  labour  as  good  as  independent  labour,  you  shall 
soon  have  more  assisted  labour  than  you  can  manage,  you 
shall  have  weakened  the  push,  energy,  and  forethought  of  your 
labouring  class,  you  shall  have  really  done  much  to  destroy 
that  very  dignity  of  labour  which  you  desire  to  establish. 
The  State  may  probably,  with  great  advantage,  do  more  for 
working-class  insurance  than  it  at  present  does.  It  could  con- 
duct the  business  of  the  burial  benefit  and  the  superannuation 
benefit  better  than  any  private  company  or  friendly  society, 


State  Socialism,  423 

because  it  could  offer  a  surer  guarantee  and  the  business  is 
routine  ;  Mr.  Gladstone's  excellent  annuity  scheme  has  remained 
sterile  only  because  it  has  not  been  pushed,  and  the  canvasser 
and  collector  are  indispensable  in  working-class  -  insurance. 
But  the  socialist  proposal  is  that  the  State  ought  to  give  every 
man  a  pension  after  a  certain  age,  irrespectively  altogether  of 
his  own  contributions,  Mr.  "Webb  is  one  of  its  most  recent 
advocates,  and,  according  to  the  useful  figures  he  has  taken 
the  trouble  to  obtain,  there  are  in  the  United  Kingdom 
1,700,000  persons  over  sixty-five  years  of  age,  of  whom 
1,300,000  contrive  to  pension  themselves,  either  by  their  own 
savings  or  the  assistance  of  their  families,  while  the  remaining 
400,000  are  supported  by  the  rates  at  an  average  cost  of  ten 
guineas  a  year.  Mr.  "Webb's  proposal  is  that  in  order  to  save 
the  feelings  of  the  400,000  dependants  you  are  to  make  the 
other  1,300,000  persons  dependants  along  with  them,  and  give 
ten  guineas  a  year  all  round.  But  you  cannot  make  a  public 
dole  a  pension  by  merely  calhng  it  a  pension.  A  pension  is  a 
payment  made  by  one's  actual  employer  for  work  done — it  is 
wages,  and  the  man  who  has  earned  his  own  pension,  or  has 
provided  it  by  his  own  saving,  feels  himself  and  is  an  inde- 
pendent man.  It  is  right  to  maintain  the  400,000 — whether 
out  of  national  or  parochial  funds  is  a  detail — but  sound  policy 
would  rather  aim  at  raising  the  400,000  to  be  as  the  1,300,000, 
than  at  lowering  the  1,300,000  to  the  level  of  the  400,000. 
With  Mr.  "Webb  it  is  not  a  question  of  giving  the  400,000 
better  allowances  than  they  receive  at  present — which  might 
be  most  reasonably  entertained — but  it  is  a  mere  question  of 
not  suffering  them  to  be  looked  down  on  by  the  1,300,000 
who  have  '  fought  their  own  way,  and  that  is  not  possible, 
nor,  with  all  respect  for  them,  is  it,  from  a  public  point  of 
view,  desirable.  It  is  right  to  support  those  who  cannot 
support  themselves,  but  it  is  neither  right  nor  wise  to  remove 
all  distincti6n  between  the  dependent  poor  and  the  inde- 
pendent. 

But  the  line  between  State  socialism  and  sound  social  politics 
in  the  matter  of  public  assistance  maj'  perhaps  be  better  shown 
in  another  branch  of  Poor  Law  administration — the  right  to 
labour  for  the  able-bodied.     The  socialist  right  to  labour  is  the 


424  Contemporary  Socialism, 

right  of  the  unemployed  to  get  labour  in  their  own  trades  and 
at  good  or  current  rates  of  wages.  That  is  the  right  which 
Bismarck  substantially  admitted  in  his  famous  speech.  He 
said  there  was  a  crowd  of  suitable  undertakings  which  the 
State  could  establish  to  furnish  the  unemployed  with  a  fair 
day's  wage  for  a  fair  day's  work.  It  is  also  practically  the 
right  which  prevailed  in  England  between  1782,  when  Gilbert's 
Act  abohshed  the  old  workhouse  test,  and  1835,  when  the  new 
Poor  Law  restored  it.  Gilbert's  Act  gave  the  able-bodied  poor 
the  right  (1)  to  obtain  from  the  guardians  work  near  their  own 
residence  and  suited  to  their  respective  strength  and  capacity ; 

(2)  to  receive  for  their  labour  all  the  money  earned  by  it ;  and 

(3)  if  that  sum  fell  short  of  then-  requirements,  to  have  the 
difiference  made  up  out  of  the  parochial  funds.  The  effect  of 
that,  as  we  know,  was,  that  public  relief  became  too  desirable, 
the  dependants  on  it  multiplied,  the  poor  rate  rose,  the  wages 
of  labour  fell,  the  very  efficiency  of  the  labourer  himself 
withered,  and  the  new  Poor  Law  reverted  to  the  workhouse 
test,  which,  harsh  though  it  was  considered  to  be,  was  in  reality 
a  necessary  defence  of  the  character  and  comfort  of  the  labour- 
ing class  from  further  decadence. 

To  provide  the  unemployed  with  work  in  their  own  trades 
is  only  to  increase  the  evil  you  wish  to  remedy,  for  the  very 
existence  of  the  unemployed  shows  that  those  particular  trades 
are  slack  at  the  time,  that  there  is  no  demand  for  the  articles 
they  produce,  and  consequently  any  attempt  by  the  State  to 
throw  fresh  supplies  of  these  articles  on  the  already  over- 
stocked market  can  have  no  other  effect  than  to  increase  the 
depression  and  turn  out  of  employ  the  men  that  are  still  at 
work.  Paying  relief  work  at  the  common  market  rate  of 
wages  is  attended  with  the  same  objection.  The  remedy  only 
aggravates  the  disease,  and  what  ought  to  be  merely  the 
labourer's  temporary  resource  against  adversity  tends  to  grow 
into  his  regular  staff  of  life.  Relief  wages,  while  sufficient  for 
the  family's  support,  should  remain  below  the  current  rates  so 
as  to  give  the  labourer  an  effective  inducement  to  seek  better 
employment  as  soon  as  better  employment  can  possibly  be 
obtained.  The  true  and  natural  defence  against  misfortune 
is  the  man's  own  personal  exertion  and  provision,  and  the  pur- 


State  Socialism.  425 

pose  of  the  public  intervention  is  to  stimulate  and  assist,  not 
to  supplant,  that  vis  medicatrix  naturce. 

But  under  these  limitations  a  right  to  labour  is  a  just  claim 
of  the  unfortunate.  It  is  admitted  in  the  English  Poor  Law, 
and  it  is  admitted  in  the  Scotch  parochial  practice,  which 
constructively  considers  want  of  employment  a  form  of  sickness 
or  accident,  and  it  requires  in  both  countries  to  be  better  real- 
ized than  it  is.  1st :  although  it  is  unadvisable  to  give  every 
man  work  at  his  own  trade,  and  although  the  choice  of  trades 
for  relief  purposes  is  attended  with  as  much  difficulty  as  the 
choice  of  those  for  prison  labour  is  found  to  be,  yet  certainly 
the  circle  of  relief  trades  ought  to  be  extended  beyond  stone- 
breaking  and  oakum-picking.  Socialists  themselves  are  among 
the  foremost  in  complaining  of  the  competition  of  prison  labour 
with  honest  labour,  although  they  fail  to  see  that  precisely  the 
same  objection  attends  the  competition  of  relieved  labour  in 
public  workshops  with  unrelieved  labour  in  regular  private 
employment.  The  kind  of  work  most  free  from  objection  on 
this  score  would  probably  be  the  production  of  articles  now 
imported  from  abroad,  and  there  are  a  great  many  trades  in 
which,  while  we  make  most  of  their  products  at  home,  we 
import  particular  articles  or  sorts  of  articles  for  one  reason  or 
another.  Some  of  these  might  be  found  suitable  for  the  pur- 
pose in  view.  Or  the  men  in  the  public  workshops  might  be 
employed  in  making  a  variety  of  things  used  in  public  offices, 
imperial  or  local.  2nd :  what  is  even  more  important,  a  dis- 
tinction ought  to  be  made  between  the  industrious  poor  and 
that  residuum  of  confirmed  failures  for  whom  the  stoneyard 
test  is  really  intended,  and  the  former  ought  not  to  be  made  to 
feel  themselves  any  way  degraded  in  their  work,  their  small 
remuneration  being  trusted  to  act  as  a  sufficient  preventive 
against  their  permanent  dependence  on  the  public  for  employ- 
ment. 3rd :  then  a  third  and  most  important  requisite  is  to 
supplement  the  public  provision  of  work  with  a  public  pro- 
vision of  information  about  the  demand  for  labour  over  the 
country  from  day  to  day,  so  as  not  merely  to  support  the  men 
in  adversity,  but  to  facilitate  their  restoration  to  their  normal 
condition  of  prosperity. 

For  we  ought  to  recognise  that  though  the  problem  of  the 


426  Contemporary   Socialism. 

unemployed  is  not,  as  many  persons  imagine,  one  of  increasing 
gra\'ity  in  our  time — although,  on  the  contrary,  if  we  go  back 
thirty  years,  sixty  years,  or  a  hundred  years,  we  always  find 
worse  complaints  and  more  distressing  sufferings  from  that 
cause  than  at  present,  yet  it  is  certainly  a  constant  problem. 
The  unemployed  we  have  always  with  us,  and  even  their 
numbers  vary  less  from  time  to  time  than  we  are  apt  to  sup- 
pose. Trades  dependent  on  fine  weather  are,  of  course,  slack 
in  winter,  but  then  trades  dependent  on  fashion  are  slack  in 
summer,  while  there  are  some  large  trades — such  as  the  shoe- 
makers— that  are  made  brisk  by  bad  weather.  Even  a  general 
commercial  crisis  which  throws  the  workpeople  of  many  trades 
idle,  makes  those  of  others  busy.  The  building  trades  are 
always  busy  in  bad  times,  because  money  and  labour  are  then 
cheap,  and  the  opportunity  is  seized  of  building  or  extending 
factories,  and  laying  down  plant  of  every  description.  It  was 
so  to  a  very  remarkable  extent  during  the  Lancashire  cotton 
distress  of  1862 ;  it  was  so  all  over  England  in  the  depression 
of  1877-78,  and  the  same  fact  was  observed  again  in  Scotland, 
and  commented  upon  by  the  factory  inspector  in  1886.  Other 
trades  are  brisker  in  a  crisis  for  less  happy  causes,  e.gr.,  the 
bakers  for  the  melancholy  reason  that  the  working  classes  are 
more  generally  driven  from  meat  to  bread.  These  natural 
corrections  or  compensations  elicited  by  the  depression  itself 
prevent  the  numbers  of  the  unemployed  from  growing  so  very- 
much  larger  in  a  crisis  than  in  ordinary  times  that  their  case 
would  not  be  overtaken  satisfactorily  by  the  general  systematic 
provision  of  relief  work,  if  that  were  once  established.  The 
excess  is  met  now  so  effectually  by  a  few  special  local  efforts, 
that  we  have  sometimes  far  fewer  able-bodied  paupers  in  bad 
years  than  in  good.  The  number  of  able-bodied  paupers  was 
very  much  less  in  the  bad  years  1876-1878  than  in  the  good 
years  immediately  after  them,  or  in  the  still  better  years  im- 
mediately before  them.  The  problem  being,  then,  so  largely 
constant  from  season  to  season,  and  from  cycle  to  cycle,  ought 
clearly  to  be  solved  by  a  permanent  and  systematic  provision. 

The  same  principle  which  governs  this  right  to  labour — 
the  principle  of  preventing  degradation  and  facilitating  self- 
recovery — governs  other  social  legislation  for  the  unfortunate 


State  Socialism.  4^7 

besides  the  Poor  Law.  It  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  homestead 
exemptions  of  America,  and  our  own  prohibition  of  arrestment 
of  tools  and  wages  for  debt,  and  our  occasional  measures  for 
cancelling  arrears.  It  is  the  principle  laid  down  by  Pitt  when 
he  said  that  no  temporary  occasion  should  be  suffered  to  force 
a  British  subject  to  part  with  his  last  shilling.  He  had  a  right 
to  his  last  shilling,  because  he  had  a  right  to  an  undegraded 
humanity.  The  last  shilling  stopped  his  fall,  and  perhaps 
helped  him  to  rise  again. 

Many  persons  will  admit  the  right  to  public  assistance, 
because  it  seems  limited  to  saving  men  from  extremities,  who 
will  see  nothing  but  socialism  of  a  perilous  sort  in  other  pubhc 
provisions,  for  which  popular  claims  are  advanced.  Schools, 
museums,  libraries,  parks,  open  spaces,  footpaths,  baths,  are 
certainly  means  of  intellectual  and  physical  life,  which  keep 
the  manhood  of  a  community  in  normal  vigour ;  but,  it  will  be 
asked,  if  the  State  once  begins  to  supply  such  things,  where 
is  it  to  stop?  Is  free  education  to  go  beyond  the  primary 
branches?  What  length  are  you  to  go?  is  the  question  Mr. 
Spencer  always  raises  as  a  bar  to  your  going  at  all.  But  the 
same  question  of  degree  can  be  raised  about  everything,  about 
the  duties  Mr.  Spencer  himself  imposes  upon  the  State  as 
really  as  about  those  he  refuses  to  sanction.  In  the  matter  of 
protection,  for  instance,  how  many  policemen  are  we  required 
to  detail  to  a  district  ?  Or  how  great  an  army  and  navy  are 
we  to  maintain  ?  During  the  excitement  about  the  Jack  the 
Ripper  murders  there  was  much  clamour  about  the  police 
being  too  few,  and  we  are  subject  to  periodical  panics  as  to  our 
imperial  defences,  in  the  course  of  which  no  two  persons  agree 
in  answering  the  question,  what  length  are  we  to  go?  The 
question  can  only  be  settled  of  course  by  measuring  the  length 
of  our  necessities  with  the  length  of  our  purse,  and  the  same 
class  of  considerations  rules  in  the  other  case,  the  importance 
and  cost  of  the  given  provision  to  a  community  of  such  educa- 
tion and  culture,  together  with  the  impossibility  of  getting 
it  adequately  supplied  without  public  agency.  The  opinion 
of  the  time  may  vary  as  to  what  is  essential  for  a  whole  and 
wholesome  manhood,  and  its  resources  may  vary  as  to  what 
may  be  easily  borne  to  supply  it ;  but  the  same  variation  takes 


428  Contemporary    Socialism. 

place  with,  respect  to  the  duties  of  national  defence,  or  the 
administration  of  justice.  The  objection  is  therefore  nothing 
more  or  less  than  the  very  ancient  and  famous  logical  fallacy 
with  which  the  Greek  sophists  used  to  nonplus  their  anta- 
gonists. As  in  other  affairs,  the  problem  so  far  will  settle  itself 
practically  as  it  goes  along,  and  the  important  distinction  to 
bear  in  mind  is  that  to  give  every  man  the  essential  conditions 
of  all  humane  living  is  a  very  different  kind  of  aim  from  giving 
every  man  the  same  share  in  the  national  production,  or  a  lien 
on  his  neighbour's  luck  or  industry  or  alertness. 

2.  From  rights  realizing  general  claims  of  the  unfortunate  on 
society  at  large,  let  us  now  pass  to  rights  realizing  special  claims 
of  certain  weaker  classes  of  society  against  certain  stronger 
classes.  The  most  typical  examples  of  this  sort  of  legislation 
are  the  intervention  of  the  State  between  buyer  and  seller, 
between  landlord  and  tenant,  between  employer  and  labourer, 
for  the  judicial  determination  of  a  fair  price,  a  fair  rent,  or  fan- 
wages,  or  for  the  regulation  of  the  conditions  of  labour,  and 
tenure  of  land.  Professor  Sidgwick  declares  the  Irish  and 
Scotch  Land  Acts,  which  provide  for  the  judicial  determination 
of  a  fair  rent,  to  be  the  most  distinctively  socialistic  measures 
the  English  Legislature  has  yet  passed ;  but  in  reality  these 
Land  Acts  are  not  a  bit  more  socialistic  than  the  laws  which 
fix  a  fair  price  for  railway  rates  and  fares,  and  much  less 
socialistic  than  the  old  usury  Acts  which  sought  to  determine 
fair  interest.  Such  interferences  with  freedom  of  contract  as 
these  are,  of  course,  only  justifiable  when  the  absence  of 
effective  competition  places  the  real  power  of  settlement  of 
terms  practically  in  the  hands  of  one  side  alone,  and  conduces, 
therefore,  inevitably  to  the  serious  injury  and  oppression  of 
the  other.  Parliament  controls  railway  charges  because  the 
railway  companies  enjoy  a  monopoly  of  most  important  busi- 
ness, and  might  use  their  monopoly  to  wrong  the  public,  and 
when  Parliament  is  asked,  as  it  sometimes  is,  to  discourage 
corners,  rings,  syndicates,  or  pooling  combinations,  it  is  on  the 
ground  that  these  various  agencies  are  attempts,  more  or  less 
successful,  to  exclude  competition  for  the  purpose  of  exacting 
from  the  public  more  than  a  fair  price.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  reason  why  we  have  given  up  fixing  fair  interest  now  is 


State  Socialism.  429 

because  we  have  come  to  see  that  competition,  being  very 
effective  among  money-lenders,  fixes  it  far  better  for  us  without 
the  intervention  of  the  law,  and,  of  course,  an  unnecessary 
interference  with  freedom  of  contract  is  nothing  but  pernicious. 
But,  although  for  ordinary  commercial  loans  the  competition 
of  lenders  is  a  sufficient  security  for  the  fair  treatment  of 
borrowers,  it  affords  no  protection  against  extortion  to  the  very 
necessitous  man,  who  must  accept  any  terms  or  starve.  His 
poverty  leaves  him  no  proper  freedom  to  make  a  contract,  and 
the  law  still  condemns  oppressive  rates  of  usury,  to  which,  as 
the  Apothecary  says  in  "Romeo  and  Juliet,"  the  poor  man's 
povert}^,  but  not  his  will,  consents.  In  such  a  case,  accordingly, 
an  authoritative  prescription  of  fair  interest  is  only  a  necessary 
requirement  of  justice  and  humanity. 

The  public  determination  of  fair  rent  stands  on  precisely  the 
same  ground.  The  rent  of  large  farms,  like  the  interest  on 
ordinary  commercial  loans,  may  be  safely  left  to  be  settled  by 
commercial  competition,  because  large  farms  are  taken  by  men 
of  capital  as  a  business  speculation,  and  landlords  cannot  exact 
more  rent  than  the  farms  will  bear  without  driving  capital  out 
of  agriculture  into  other  branches  of  production,  and  so  reducing 
the  demand  for  that  class  of  farms  to  an  extent  that  will  bring 
the  rent  down  to  its  proper  level  again.  But  the  rent  of  small 
holdings,  like  the  interest  on  loans  to  persons  in  extremity,  is 
ruled  by  other  considerations.  Cottier  tenants,  between  their 
numbers  and  their  necessities,  are  continually  driven  into 
offering  rents  the  land  can  never  be  made  to  pay,  and  thereby 
incurring  for  the  rest  of  their  days  the  burden  of  a  lengthening 
chain  of  arrears  little  better  than  Oriental  debt-slavery.  Other 
work  is  hard  to  find ;  the  land  being  limited  in  supply  is  a 
natural  monopoly ;  and  the  State  merely  steps  in  to  save  the 
tenantry  from  the  injurious  effects  of  their  own  over-competi- 
tion for  an  essential  instrument  of  their  labour,  and,  through 
their  labour,  of  their  very  existence.  The  interference,  there- 
fore, is  perfectly  justifiable  if  the  machinery  it  institutes  can 
carry  out  the  purpose  efficiently,  and  there  is  this  difference 
between  a  court  for  fixing  rent  and  a  court  for  fixing  the  price 
of  bread,  or  beer,  or  labour,  that  it  is  only  doing  work  which 
in  the  natural  course  of  things  is  very  usually  done  by  peri- 


430  Contemporary   Socialism. 

odical  and  independent  valuation,  instead  of  by  the  ordinary 
higgling  of  the  market.  It  has  always  been  the  custom  on 
many  large  estates  to  call  in  a  valuator  from  the  outside  for 
the  revision  of  the  rents,  and  a  valuator  appointed  by  the 
Crown  cannot  be  expected  to  do  the  work  any  less  effectively 
than  a  valuator  appointed  by  the  landlord.  Moreover,  the 
tendency  of  opinion  seems  to  be  towards  the  simplication  of 
the  process  by  some  self-working  scheme,  a  sliding  scale  for 
apportioning  an  annual  rent  to  the  annual  production. 

State  intervention  in  the  determination  of  the  rate  of  wages 
is  often  proposed  either  for  the  purpose  of  settling  trade  dis- 
putes on  the  subject,  or  for  the  purpose  of  suppressing  what  is 
called  starvation  wages  and  fixing  a  legal  minimum  rate.  As 
for  arbitration  in  trade  disputes,  the  object  is,  of  course,  in  no 
way  socialistic,  for  it  is  strictly  allied  with  the  ordinary  judicial 
work  of  the  State,  and  a  public  and  permanent  tribunal  would 
probably  answer  the  purpose  much  better  than  a  private  and 
merely  occasional  one ;  for  even  although  it  might  not  be  able 
to  enforce  its  judgments  in  all  cases  by  compulsion  on  the 
parties,  it  would  be  more  likely  than  the  other  to  command 
their  confidence  and  secure  by  its  moral  authority  their 
voluntary  submission,  and  this  authority  would  increase  with 
the  experience  of  the  court. 

In  certain  cases  compulsory  arbitration  seems  to  be  required. 
There  are  trades  in  which  the  public  interest  may  require 
strikes  to  be  prohibited,  in  order  to  prevent  a  whole  com- 
munity suffering  grave  privations,  perhaps  being  starved  of  its 
supply  of  a  necessary  of  life.  The  Trades  Union  Act  imposes 
express  restrictions  on  combinations  among  the  labourers  at  gas 
and  water  works,  and  the  recent  railway  strike  in  Scotland, 
which  not  only  paralyzed  trade  for  a  time,  but  stopped  the 
supply  of  coal  to  whole  districts  in  the  middle  of  the  severest 
winter  of  the  last  part  of  the  century,  suggested  to  many 
minds  the  propriety  of  similar  interference  in  railway  disputes. 
But  if  the  State  interfered  to  stop  the  strike,  the  State  must 
needs  in  equity  interfere  to  decide  upon  the  cause  of  quarrel. 
And  happily  these  are  the  very  cases  which  are  best  fitted  for 
compulsory  arbitration,  because  the  trades  concerned  are  not 
subject  to  the  market  fluctuations  to  which  other  trades  are 


State  Socialism.  431 

liable,  and  are  therefore  better  suited  for  fixed  settlements  of 
definite  and  considerable  duration. 

But  what  socialists  claim  is  a  universal  determination  of 
normal  wages,  so  as  to  give  every  man  the  full  product  of  his 
labour,  as  the  full  product  of  his  labour  is  understood  upon 
their  theory.  For  the  present,  however,  they  are  content  to 
ask  for  at  least  the  establishment  of  a  legal  minimum  rate  of 
wages ;  in  fact,  an  international  minimum  rate  of  wages  and 
an  international  eight  hours  working  day  are  the  two  demands 
on  which  their  agitation  is  in  the  meantime  most  strenuously 
concentrated.  In  their  recent  policy  they  have  reverted  to  the 
kind  of  remedies  they  used  to  speak  of  with  such  lofty  disdain 
as  mere  palliatives,  and  have  only  preserved  their  separate 
identity  from  other  reformers  by  asking  for  these  palliatives 
in  their  least  practicable  form.  An  international  compulsory 
minimum  wage  is  impossible,  for  even  a  national  one  is  so, 
and  that  is  the  only  objection,  but  a  very  sufficient  one,  to 
the  proposal.  If  you  could  wipe  out  starvation  wages  by  pass- 
ing an  Act  of  Parliament,  let  the  Act  be  passed  to-morrow,  for 
starvation  wages  is  surely  the  worst  and  most  exasperating  of 
all  the  enemies  of  humane  living.  To  starve  for  want  of  power 
to  work  is  bad ;  to  starve  for  want  of  work  is  worse ;  but  to 
work  and  yet  starve,  to  work  a  long,  long  day  without  obtain- 
ing the  bread  that  should  be  its  natural  reward,  is  a  third  and 
worst  degree  of  misfortune,  for  it  mocks  the  fitness  and  equity 
of  things,  and  seizes  the  mind  like  a  wrong.  If  it  is  right  to 
suppress  starvation  by  law,  it  would  seem  more  right  still  to 
suppress  starvation  wages ;  and  if  the  socialist  contention  were 
in  the  least  true,  that  in  consequence  of  the  "  iron  and  cruel 
law  "  all  wages  are  starvation  wages,  and  all  work  sweaters' 
work,  that  work  and  starve  is  the  inevitable  rule  under  the 
present  system  of  things,  there  would  be  no  good  answer  to 
their  demand  for  the  abolition  of  the  present  system  of  things. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact  working  and  starving  is  the  condition 
of  only  exceptional  groups  of  workpeople,  and  the  right  to  a 
minimum  wage,  in  the  sense  of  a  wage  above  starvation  point, 
would  have  no  bearing  on  the  great  majority  of  the  labouring 
classes,  inasmuch  as  they  stand  already  on  a  considerably 
higher  level  of  remuneration. 


432  Contemporary  Socialism. 

Ought  the  State,  however,  to  fix  a  legal  minimiim  of  -wages 
for  the  protection  of  the  exceptional  groups  of  workpeople  to 
whose  situation  such  a  measure  might  have  relation?  The 
objection  to  this  course  comes  less  from  want  of  justice  in  the 
claim  than  from  want  of  power  in  the  State  to  realize  it. 
The  fixing  of  a  legal  minimum  rate  of  wages  is  a  task  which 
it  is  beyond  the  State's  power  to  accomplish,  except  by  paying 
up  the  minimum  out  of  its  own  funds ;  for,  though  the  law 
fixed  a  minimum  to-morrow,  it  could  not  compel  employers  to 
engage  workmen  at  that  minimum ;  and  if  employers  found  it 
unprofitable  to  do  so,  the  only  effect  of  the  legislation  would 
be  to  throw  numbers  of  men  out  of  work,  and  make  their 
maintenance  at  the  legal  minimum  an  obligation  of  the  public 
treasury.  Of  the  results  of  paying  wages  out  of  the  rates  we 
have  had  plenty  of  experience.  To  suppress  starvation  wages 
in  this  way  by  direct  statute  is  merely  impossible,  however, 
and  there  would  be  no  taint  of  socialism  in  it,  if  it  could  be 
done.  Much  less  can  the  like  objection  be  made  against  any 
milder  remedies.  The  only  danger  is  that  they  would  not 
prove  efiectual,  and  would  address  themselves  to  false  causes. 
Take  the  sweating  system  of  the  East  End  of  London,  in 
which,  bad  conditions  of  labour  always  going  together,  we  find 
starvation  wages  combined  with  long  hours  and  unwholesome 
work-rooms.  Two  of  the  favourite  remedies  are  the  abolition 
of  sub-contracting  and  the  prohibition  of  pauper  Jewish  im- 
migration ;  but  neither  of  these  things  is  the  cause  of  sweating. 
The  sweating  contractor  of  the  East  End  is  not  a  sub-con- 
tractor at  all ;  he  is  the  only  contractor  in  the  business,  and 
even  if  he  were  a  sub-contractor,  we  know  that  sub-contractors 
often  pay  far  better  wages  than  the  chief  contractor  can,  be- 
cause they  know  their  men  better,  and  get  better  work  out  of 
them. 

A  temporary  increase  in  the  Jewish  immigration  may 
occasion  a  temporary  aggravation  of  the  difficulty,  but  the 
permanent  causes  lie  elsewhere,  and  even  in  the  way  of 
aggravation  a  matter  of  a  thousand  Jews  more,  or  a  thousand 
Jews  less,  cannot  play  an  all-important  part  in  a  system  afiect- 
ing  some  hundred  thousand  workpeople.  Sweating  is  no  more 
incident  to  Jewish  labour  than  to  English  labour.     The  cheap 


State  Socialism,  433 

clofhing  trade  of  Birmingham  is  certainly  in  the  hands  of  Jews, 
yet  sweating  is — or  at  least  was  when  the  factory  inspector 
reported  in  1879 — absolutely  unknown.  The  wages,  he  said, 
were  good,  the  hours  were  not  long,  and  there  were  no  over- 
crowded dens.  On  the  other  hand,  sweating  has  not  only  been 
for  years  endemic  in  the  East  End  of  London,  but  has  even 
appeared  in  a  very  acute  form,  apart  from  any  alien  influence, 
in  the  tailoring  trade  in  Melbourne,  the  paradise  of  working 
people,  as  it  is  sometimes  not  unjustly  denominated.  The 
sweating  there  was  conducted  largely  by  ladies  who  took  in 
bands  of  learners,  and,  according  to  the  evidence  before  the 
Shopkeepers'  Commission  of  1883,  every  second  house  in  some 
of  the  suburbs  was  a  shop  of  that  kind.  There  was  an  excessive 
influx  of  labour  into  that  trade,  because  little  other  work  could 
be  found  for  women  who  entertained,  as  they  do  generally  in 
that  colony,  a  prejudice  against  both  factory  labour  and 
domestic  service.  On  the  other  hand,  this  overflow  was 
diverted  in  Birmingham  into  other  channels  by  the  com- 
parative abundance  of  light  employments  the  district  afforded. 
But  apart  from  temporary  or  local  circumstances  that  serve  to 
aggravate  things  or  alleviate  them,  the  tailor  trade  is  every- 
where naturally  subject  beyond  all  others  to  over-competition : 
(1)  because  the  work  can  be  done  at  home ;  (2)  because  it  can 
be  learnt  in  a  few  weeks  or  months  well  enough  to  earn  starva- 
tion wages  in  a  long  day  at  some  sorts  of  work ;  (3)  because  it 
needs  as  little  capital  for  the  contractor  to  start  business  as  it 
needs  training  for  the  operatives ;  and  (4)  because  the  operatives 
being  scattered  about  in  their  own  homes,  or  in  small  work- 
shops here  and  there,  have  a  natural  difiiculty  in  coming  to 
any  concerted  action  that  might  otherwise  mitigate  the  effects 
of  the  over-competition,  and  if  there  is  any  general  remedy  for 
sweating,  it  must  deal  with  these  causes.  To  replace  home- 
work by  common  work  in  wholesome  workshops,  as  far  as  that 
can  be  done,  might  interfere  with  what  some  poor  persons 
found  a  convenient  resource,  but  would  do  no  harm  to  the 
working  class  generally.  The  work  it  was  less  convenient  for 
some  to  do  would  be  done  by  others.  The  change  would 
remove  at  once  one  of  the  evils  of  sweating — the  unhealthy 
work-places — and  it  would   contribute  to  remove  the  others, 

p  F 


434  Contemporary   Socialism. 

first  by  facilitating  combination,  and  second  by  improving  the 
personal  efficiency  of  the  labourer  and  the  amount  of  his 
production.  Dr.  Watts,  of  Manchester,  speaking  from  long 
experience,  tells  us  in  his  "  Facts  of  the  Cotton  Famine " 
(p.  44)  that  "  men  often  care  more  about  being  employed  in  a 
good  mill  (/.e.,  a  mill  with  plenty  of  room,  air,  and  light)  than 
about  the  exact  price  per  pound  for  spinning,  or  per  piece  for 
weaving,  for  they  know  practically  what  is  the  effect  of  these 
conditions  upon  the  weekly  wages."  Various  measures  have 
been  suggested  which  have  some  such  end  in  view — the  com- 
pulsory registration  of  the  contractor's  workrooms  and  his 
outworkers,  the  requiring  him  to  provide  workshops  for  all  his 
hands,  the  joint  liability  of  the  clothier  with  him  for  the 
wholesomeness  of  the  workplaces,  the  erection  of  public  work- 
shops where  workpeople  may  be  accommodated  for  hire ;  they 
may  be  open  to  various  objections — and  there  is  no  space  to 
indicate  or  discuss  them  here — but  if  they  are  eflectual  for  the 
purpose  contemplated,  that  purpose  saves  them  at  least  from 
the  reproach  of  socialism. 

The  international  compulsory  eight  hours  day  is  attended 
with  like  difficulty.  The  eight  hours  day  is  no  necessary  plank 
of  socialism,  though  socialists  have  at  present  united  to  de- 
mand it.  Rodbertus,  the  most  learned  and  scientific  of  modern 
socialists,  always  contended  that  the  normal  working-day  ought 
not  to  be  of  uniform  length,  but  should  vary  inversely  with 
the  relative  strain  of  the  several  trades,  and  Mr.  Bellamy, 
under  his  system  of  absolute  equality  of  income,  makes  differ- 
ences in  the  hours  of  labour  answer  the  purpose  of  regulating 
the  choice  of  occupation,  and  preventing  too  many  persons 
running  into  the  easier  trades,  and  too  few  into  the  harder. 
Nor,  indeed,  apart  from  the  element  of  universal  compulsion, 
has  the  eight  hours  day  anything  of  socialism  in  it  at  all.  In 
some  trades  it  is  probably  a  simple  necessity  for  protecting  the 
workpeople  in  normal  conditions  of  health  ;  but  above  all  its 
sanitary  benefits  it  would  confer  upon  the  workpeople  of  eVery 
trade  alike  the  much  grander  blessing  of  admitting  them  to  a 
reasonable  share  of  the  intellectual,  social,  domestic,  religious, 
and  political  life  of  their  time.  If  the  State  could  bestow  upon 
them  this  sovereign  blessing  without  forcing  them  to  accept 


State  Socialism.  435 

a  reduction  of  wages,  whicli  might  deprive  them  of  things  even 
more  essential  for  their  elevation,  and  which  would  only  breed 
among  them  an  intolerable  discontent,  by  all  means  let  the 
State  declare  the  glad  decree.  But  experience  shows  that  in 
matters  of  this  kind  the  State — and  especially  the  democratic 
State — is  a  very  limited  agent,  and  cannot  successfully  enforce 
its  decrees  upon  unwilling  trades.  In  certain  special  cases, 
when  the  short  day  is  demanded  for  the  purpose  of  averting 
admitted  dangers  to  health,  as  with  the  miners,  or  for  the 
safety  of  the  public,  as  with  the  railway  service,  there  is  a 
recognised  stringency  of  obligation  which  is  exceptional  ;  but 
in  the  great  run  of  trades  the  question  is  virtually  one  of  mere 
preference  between  an  hour's  leisure  and  an  hour's  pay,  and 
in  these  circumstances  a  law  has  too  little  moral  authority 
behind  it  to  be  practically  enforceable  by  penalties  in  the 
absence  of  decided  working-class  opinion  in  its  favour  in  the 
affected  trades.  In  Victoria  more  than  fifty  separate  trades 
have  obtained  the  eight  hours  day  without  any  parliamentary 
assistance,  and  almost  the  only  remaining  trades  which  do  not 
yet  enjoy  it  are  the  very  trades  which  have  been  protected  by 
an  eight  hours  Factory  Act  since  1874.  As  soon  as  the  Act 
was  passed,  the  operatives,  men  and  women  both,  petitioned 
the  Chief  Secretary  for  its  suspension,  and  it  has  remained  in 
suspended  animation  to  this  day.  A  democratic  government 
cannot  risk  incurring  the  discontent  of  a  body  of  the  people 
merely  to  prevent  them  from  working  an  hour  more  when 
they  want  to  earn  a  little  more.  California  has  had  an  Eight 
Hours  Act  on  the  statute-book  for  even  a  longer  period,  but  it 
has  remained  a  mere  dead  letter,  because  employers  began  to 
pay  wages  by  the  hour  or  the  piece,  and  the  men  found  they 
did  not  earn  so  much  in  the  short  day  as  they  used  to  earn  in 
the  long.  The  same  thing  has  happened  in  others  of  the 
American  States,  and  the  friends  of  the  eight  hours  movement 
in  that  country  are  beginning  to  think  that  the  reason  their 
long  and  often  hot  struggle  has  hitherto  been  so  fruitless  is 
-because  they  have  been  wasting  their  strength  in  political 
agitation  when  they  ought  to  have  been  cultivating  and 
oi'gaiiizing  opinion  among  the  working  class  themselves  trade 
by  trade.     The  weakness  of  statutory  eight  hours  movements 


436  Contemporary   Socialism, 

has  generally  flowed  from  two  sources.  One  is  that  what 
their  promoters  really  wanted  was  not  shorter  hours,  but  more 
wages.  Numbers  of  them  sought  only  to  shorten  regular  time 
in  order  to  lengthen  overtime,  and  numbers  more  got  them- 
selves persuaded  that  a  general  reduction  of  hours  was  the 
grand  means  of  effecting  a  general  rise  of  wages,  either  by 
removing  the  competition  of  the  unemployed,  or  in  some  other 
way  ;  and  it  has  often  been  only  the  few — always  the  very  elite 
of  labour — who  fought  for  the  eight  hours  day  because  they 
valued  the  leisure  enough  to  make,  if  necessary,  some  little 
sacrifice  for  so  noble  a  boon.  When,  therefore,  wages,  instead 
of  rising,  begin  to  get  reduced,  general  disappointment  is  in- 
evitable, and  they  get  reduced — and  reduced  lower  than  they 
otherwise  might  be — through  the  second  weakness  of  such 
movements,  which  is  simply  this,  that  a  trades  union  which  is 
not  strong  enough  to  get  an  eight  hours  day  by  their  own  un- 
aided efforts,  without  the  assistance  of  the  law,  is  not  strong 
enough  to  prevent  their  wages  from  sinking,  and  in  this  matter 
the  law  can  do  nothing  to  help  them.  The  eight  hours  day 
can  only  be  an  abiding  possession  if  it  come  through  the 
successive  growth  of  opinion  and  organization  in  one  trade 
after  another.  The  history  of  the  movement  in  Victoria  is  the 
history  of  such  successive  triumphs  of  opinion  and  organiza- 
tion ;  as  soon  as  a  trade  has  come  to  want  the  eight  hours  day 
earnestly  enough  to  be  willing  to  sacrifice  something  for  it,  the 
trade  has  always  got  it.  In  the  result  they  have  had  to  sacri- 
fice very  little  ;  scarce  one  of  them  suffered  a  fall  of  wages  by 
the  change,  for  the  simple  reason  that  there  was  no  serious  fall 
in  their  daily  production.  The  difference  between  the  ten 
hours  day  and  the  eight  hours  day  in  Victoria  was  not  two 
hours,  but  only  three-quarters  of  an  hour,  for — at  least  in  the 
important  trades — the  old  day  was  ten  hours,  with  an  hour 
and  a  quarter  off  for  meals  ;  and  in  eight  hours  with  only  one 
break  the  men  probably  did  near  as  much  as  they  did  before 
in  the  eight  hours  and  three-quarters  with  a  double  break. 
Still,  most  of  the  trades  took  twenty  or  five-and-twenty  years 
before  they  ventured  to  join  the  movement ;  and  though  no 
country  in  the  world  is  so  much  under  the  control  of  working- 
class  opinion  as  Victoria,  the  proposal  of  a  general  legal  eight 


State  Socialism.  ^  437 

hours  day  which  has  repeatedly  come  before  the  Legislature 
has  never  been  carried  into  law. 

In  one  sense  the  eight  hours  day  is  the  least  socialistic  of  all 
reforms  proposed  in  the  interest  of  the  working  class,  for  it  is 
impossible  to  make  the  other  classes  of  society  pay  for  the  boon. 
It  may  not,  perhaps,  be  quite  certain  that  there  will  be  any- 
thing to  pay  for  it  at  all,  for  many  people  assure  us  produc- 
tion will  suffer  nothing  by  the  change,  and  some  promise  us 
it  will  be  even  increased.  But  one  thing  at  least  is  certain : 
if  there  is  anything  to  pay,  it  is  the  working  classes  themselves 
who  in  the  end  will  and  must  pay  it.  The  reduction  can 
make  no  great  difference  to  emplo^'ers,  except  on  running  con- 
tracts, or  where  for  any  reason  they  refuse  to  keep  their  plant 
in  use  by  an  extra  shift,  for  in  the  matter  of  wages  they  will 
do  under  an  eight  hours  sj'stem  exactly  what  they  do  now — 
pay  the  men  for  the  amount  of  work  they  get  out  of  them  and 
no  more ;  and  as  they  thus  produce  their  goods  at  the  old  cost, 
they  can  export  them  at  the  old  price.  It  need  not,  therefore, 
have  any  permanent  effect  worth  speaking  of  on  the  general 
trade  of  the  country.  But  if  the  men  do  less,  their  wages 
will  be  less  too,*  and  nothing  can  long  keep  them  what  they 
were.  This  wages  question  is  the  eight  hours  question ;  and 
while  it  is  a  question  for  the  men  more  than  for  the  masters, 
it  is  essential  they  should  keep  clear  of  all  misconception  in 
deciding  it. 

There  is  no  way  of  getting  ten  hours'  pay  for  eight  hours' 
work  except  by  doing  the  work  of  ten  hours  in  the  eight.  An 
Eight  Hours  Act  would  give  working  men  no  new  power  to 
raise  the  rate  of  wages ;  and  if  they  cannot  by  combination 
get  twelve  hours'  pay  for  t«n  hours'  work  to-day,  they  cannot 
by  combination  get  ten  hours'  pay  for  eight  hours'  work  to- 
morrow. It  is,  indeed,  a  very  current  delusion,  that  a  restric- 
tion of  production  must  increase  wages  by  necessitating  the 
employment  of  the  unemployed,  whose  competition  tends  at 
present  to  prevent  wages  from  rising.  But  that  effect  could 
only  occur  if  the  same  demand  for  commodities  remained,  and 

*  For  proof  of  the  position  that  the  rate  of  wages  is  determined  by  the 
amount  of  production,  see  pp.  307-11. 


438  Contemporary   Socialism. 

althougli  that  miglit  be  the  case  if  the  restriction  were  confined 
to  a  single  branch  of  industry,  while  all  the  rest  continued  to 
produce  as  much  as  before,  it  would  not  be  so  if  the  restriction 
were  carried  out  simultaneously  all  round.  The  various  trades 
are  one  another's  customers  ;  the  commodities  one  supplies  con- 
stitute the  demand  for  the  labour  of  the  others ;  and  if  the  supply 
is  reduced  all  round,  the  demand  will  be  reduced  all  round.  To 
say  there  is  at  any  moment  a  fixed  amount  of  work  that  has  to 
be  done  whatever  the  produce  of  the  labour,  is,  as  Professor 
Marshall  very  happUy  observes,  to  set  up  a  Work  Fund  Dogma 
exactly  analogous  to  the  old  Wages  Fund  Doctrine  of  the 
schools,  and,  he  might  have  added,  a  dogma  even  more 
dangerous  to  the  prosperity  of  the  working-man.  Yet  the  idea 
is  abroad ;  it  appears  in  the  trade-union  policy  of  "  making 
work  " — that  is,  making  work  for  to-morrow  by  not  doing  it 
to-day;  it  is  a  kind  of  mercantilist  delusion  of  the  present 
century,  by  which  each  trade  is  to  cut  some  advantage  for 
itself  out  of  the  sides  of  the  others  until  they  all  come  to  prac- 
tise the  trick  in  turn  and  fall  to  mysterious  ruin  together. 

If  the  eight  hours  day  is  to  raise  wages,  it  will  not  be  by 
limiting  production,  but  by  improving  it.  That  the  produc- 
tivity of  labour  is  capable  of  improving — nay,  that  it  is  certain 
to  improve  to  such  an  extent  as  to  earn  by-and-by  more  wages 
in  an  eight  hours  day  than  it  now  does  in  a  ten — is  scarce 
matter  of  doubt.  Apart  from  the  influence  of  machinery  and 
invention,  there  is  a  great  reserve  of  personal  efficiency,  espe- 
cially in  English  labour,  still  capable  of  development.  Mr. 
Nasmyth,  the  inventor  of  the  steam-hammer,  said  that  he 
noticed  when  watching  his  men  at  work,  that  most  of  them 
spent  at  least  two-thirds  of  their  time,  not  in  working,  but  in 
criticising  their  work  with  the  square  and  the  straight-edge, 
which  the  few  dexterous  workmen  among  them  almost  never 
required  to  use.  An  increase  of  dexterity  might,  therefore, 
make  up  for  a  reduction  of  the  day  in  these  trades  even  to  four 
hours.  But  the  present  question  is  about  the  probable  effect 
of  the  reduction  itself  upon  the  efficiency  of  labour,  and  ex- 
perience certainly  does  not  justify  those  who  declare  that  it 
would  increase  the  daily  product.  The  effect  of  a  reduction 
from  ten  hours  or  nine  to  eight  is,  of  course,  an  entirely  different 


State  Socialism.  439 

question  from  the  effect  of  a  reduction  from  twelve  or  thirteen 
to  ten,  because  the  last  two  hours'  labour  in  a  very  long  and 
exhausting  day  may  bear  little  comparison  with  the  last  two 
hours  of  a  shorter  day ;  and  of  the  exact  effect  of  the  particular 
reduction  from  ten  to  eight  we  possess  but  scanty  evidence, 
though  much  might  easily  be  obtained,  one  would  think,  from 
establishments  that  run,  as  many  do,  ten  hours  in  summer  and 
eight  hours  in  winter,  or  ten  hours  in  busy  times  and  eight 
hours  in  slack.  "We  have  some  American  evidence  of  this  sort, 
but  it  is  very  contradictory,  a  few  employers  saying  that  quite 
as  much  work  was  done  in  the  eight  hours  as  in  the  ten,  and 
others  that  as  much  would  have  been  done  had  the  men  made 
a  better  use  of  their  leisure,  while  several  more  complained 
that  the  men  really  did  less,  and  that  their  energies  were  posi- 
tively slackened  under  the  short  hours — tliis  also  perhaps  being 
a  result  of  the  use  they  made  of  their  leisure.  In  Victoria  the 
production  seems  to  have  been  reduced  a  little,  but  really  so 
little  as  to  have  no  very  perceptible  results,  and  the  leisure  is 
used  so  well  that  the  working  class  have  made  a  distinct  rise 
in  the  scale  of  being,  and  have  developed  a  remarkable  love  of 
outdoor  sports,  and  spare  energy  enough  to  produce  some  of 
the  most  famous  cricketers  and  scullers  in  the  world.  There 
are  some  trades  in  which  it  is  possible  for  production  to 
diminish  and  yet  wages  to  remain  the  same,  because  the 
difference  can  be  thrown  into  the  price  of  the  product.  These 
are  trades  supplying  a  commodity  in  general  and  necessary 
demand  of  which  the  consumers  will  stand  a  very  considerable 
rise  in  the  price  before  they  will  seriously  shorten  their  pur- 
chases. Coal  is  a  good  example  of  such  a  commodity,  and  the 
miners  are  therefore  very  happily  situated  for  the  adoption  of 
an  eight  hours  day.  They  are  more  able  than  most  other 
trades  to  prevent  such  a  measure  from  resulting  in  any  fall  of 
wages,  and  consequently  a  legal  enactment  on  the  subject  is 
less  likely  with  them  to  create  subsequent  disappointment,  and 
remain  dead  letter.  They  need  State  help  in  the  matter  less 
than  most  trades,  for  they  are  strong  and  well  organized  ;  but 
an  Eight  Hours  Act  would  be  more  easily  enforced  among  them. 
Very  few  trades,  however,  are  in  this  exceptional  position.  On 
the  whole,  the  risk  of  material  loss  incurred  by  the  reduction 


440  Contemporary   Socialism. 

is  slight  compared  with  the  certainty  and  greatness  of  the 
moral  gain ;  the  material  loss  will,  in  any  case,  be  soon  made 
up  by  industrial  improvements,  if  things  progress  as  they  are 
doing ;  and  if  the  reduction  is  more  likely  to  come  through  the 
union  and  organization  of  the  trades  themselves  rather  than 
by  either  national  or  international  action,  the  trades  at  least 
need  have  no  serious  fear  to  make  the  venture. 

The  idea  of  settling  questions  of  this  kind  by  international 
action,  which  was  started  at  first  from  the  side  of  the  employers 
as  a  convenient  obstructive,  but  has  since  been  taken  up  with 
great  zeal  by  the  young  German  Emperor  and  the  socialists,  is 
obviously  delusive.  It  ignores  the  possibilities  of  the  case,  for 
who,  in  the  first  place,  is  to  adjust  the  complicated  details  of 
this  international  handicap,  and  if  they  were  adjusted,  who  is 
to  enforce  them  ?  No  country  is  likely  to  be  very  strict  in  en- 
forcing those  parts  of  the  settlement  by  which  it  lost  some 
point  of  advantage,  and  those  are  the  only  parts  for  which 
any  such  settlement  was  wanted  at  all.  Besides,  international 
labour  treaties  are  quite  unnecessary.  Experience  all  over  the 
world  shows  that  a  short-hour  State  suffers  nothing  in  the 
competition  with  a  long-hour  State.  When  Massachusetts  be- 
came a  ten-hour  State,  her  manufacturers  never  found  them- 
selves at  any  disadvantage  in  competing  with  those  of  the 
neighbouring  eleven-hour  States  of  New  England,  and  they 
would  have  still  less  to  fear  from  rivals  who  employed,  not  the 
same  Anglo-Saxon  labour  as  they  did  themselves,  but  the  less 
efficient  labour  of  Germany  or  France.  The  ten-hour  day 
was  its  own  reward.  It  improved  the  efficiency  of  the  work- 
people to  the  degree  where,  in  concert  with  improvements  in 
the  management,  also  due  to  the  shortening  of  the  day,  the 
product  of  ten  hours  in  Massachusetts  was  equal  to  the  product 
of  eleven  elsewhere.  If  the  same  result  were  to  follow  the 
adoption  of  an  eight  hours  day,  which,  however,  has  still  to  be 
tested  by  experiment,  there  is  of  course  no  more  reason  why 
one  country  should  wait  for  another  in  adopting  the  eight 
hours  day  than  in  adopting  the  policy  of  free  trade. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  AGRAETAN   SOCIALISM   OF   HENEY   GEORGE. 

Mr.  George  sent  liis  "  Progress  and  Poverty  "  into  the  .world 
with  the  remarkable  prediction  that  it  would  find  not  only 
readers  but  apostles.  "  "Whatever  be  its  fate,"  he  says,  "  it 
will  be  read  by  some  who  in  their  heart  of  hearts  have  taken 
the  cross  of  a  new  crusade.  .  .  .  The  truth  I  have  tried  to 
make  clear  will  not  find  easy  acceptance.  If  that  could  be,  it 
would  have  been  accepted  long  ago.  If  that  could  be,  it  would 
never  have  been  obscured.  But  it  will  find  friends — those 
who  will  toil  for  it,  suffer  for  it :  if  need  be,  die  for  it.  This  is 
the  power  of  the  truth"  (p.  393).  Mr.  George's  prediction  is 
not  more  remarkable  than  its  fulfilment.  His  work  has  had  an 
unusually  extensive  sale  ;  a  hundred  editions  in  America,  and 
an  edition  of  60,000  copies  in  this  country  are  sufficient  evi- 
dences of  that;  but  the  most  striking  feature  in  its  reception 
is  precisely  that  which  its  author  foretold  ;  it  created  an  army 
of  apostles,  and  was  enthusiastically  circulated,  like  the  testa- 
ment of  a  new  dispensation.  Societies  were  formed,  journals 
were  devised  to  propagate  its  saving  doctrines,  and  little 
companies  of  the  faithful  held  stated  meetings  for  its  reading 
and  exposition.  It  was  carried  as  a  message  of  consolation  to 
the  homes  of  labour.  The  author  was  hailed  as  a  new  and 
better  Adam  Smith,  as  at  once  a  reformer  of  science  and  a 
renovator  of  society.  Smith  unfolded  "  The  Nature  and  Causes 
of  the  Wealth  of  Nations,"  but  to  Mr.  George,  we  were  told, 
was  reserved  the  greater  part  of  unravelling  "  the  nature  and 
causes  of  the  poverty  of  nations,"  and  if  the  obsolete  science  of 
wealth  had  served  to  make  England  rich,  the  young  science 
of  poverty  was  at  length  to  make  her  people  happy  with  the 
money.  Justice  and  Liberty  were  to  begin  their  reign,  and  our 
eyes  were  to  see — to  quote  Mr.  George's  own  words — "  the  City 


442  Contemporary   Socialis7Jz. 

of  God  on  earth,  with  its  walls  of  jasper  and  its  gates  of  pearl " 
(p.  392). 

The  fervour  of  this  first  reception  may — as  was  perhaps  only 
natural — have  suffered  some  abatement  since,  but  it  affords  a 
striking  proof  how  largely  modern  society  is  disquieted  by  the 
results  of  our  vaunted  industrial  civilization.  Even  those 
amongst  us  who  are  most  unwilling  to  disparage  the  improve- 
ment that  has  really  taken  place  during  the  last  hundred  years 
in  the  circumstances  of  the  people,  still  cannot  help  feeling 
that  the  improvement  has  fallen  far  short  of  what  might  have 
been  reasonably  expected  from  the  contemporaneous  growth 
of  resources  and  productive  power.  But  numbers  of  people 
will  not  allow  that  any  improvement  has  occurred  at  all,  and 
deliver  themselves  to  an  unhappy  and  unwarranted  pessimism 
on  the  whole  subject.  Because  industrial  progress  has  not 
extinguished  poverty,  they  conclude  that  it  has  not  even 
lessened  it ;  that  it  has  no  power  to  lessen  it ;  nay,  that  its  real 
tendency  is  to  aggravate  it,  that  it  increases  wealth  with  the 
one  hand,  but  increases  want  with  the  other,  so  that  civiliza- 
tion has  developed  into  a  purely  upper-class  feast,  where  the 
rich  are  grossly  overfilled  with  good  things,  and  the  poor  are 
sent  always  emptier  and  emptier  away.  Invention,  they  tell 
us,  has  followed  invention;  machinery  has  multiplied  the 
labourer's  productivity  at  least  tenfold ;  new  colonies  have 
been  founded,  new  markets  and  channels  of  commerce  opened 
in  every  quarter  of  the  globe ;  gold-fields  have  been  discovered, 
free  trade  has  been  introduced,  railways  and  ocean  steamers 
have  shortened  time  and  space  themselves  in  our  service. 
Each  and  all  of  these  things  have  excited  hopes  of  introducing 
an  era  of  popular  improvement,  and  each  and  all  of  them  have 
left  these  hopes  unfulfilled.  They  think,  therefore,  they  now 
do  well  to  despair,  and  they  fortify  themselves  in  their  gloom 
by  citing  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Mill,  that  "  it  is  questionable 
whether  all  the  mechanical  inventions  yet  made  have  lightened 
the  day's  toil  of  any  human  being,"  without  observing  that 
Mr.  Mill  immediately  follows  up  that  opinion  by  expressing 
the  confident  assurance  that  it  was  "in  the  nature  and  the 
futurity "  of  these  inventions  to  effect  that  improvement. 
These  gloomy  views  have   in  France  received  the  name  of 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     443 

Sisyphism,  because  they  represent  the  working  class  under  the 
present  industrial  system  as  being  struck  with  a  curse  like  that 
of  Sisyphus,  always  encouraged  by  fresh  technical  advantages 
to  renewed  expectations,  and  always  doomed  to  see  their 
expectations  perish  for  ever. 

Now,  it  was  upon  these  despondent  and  burdened  souls  that 
Mr.  George  counted  so  confidently,  and,  as  time  has  shown, 
so  correctly,  for  his  apostles  and  martyrs ;  and  he  counted  so 
confidently  upon  them  because  he  had  himself  borne  their 
sorrows,  and  drunk  of  their  despair,  and  because  he  now 
believed  most  entirely  that  his  discoveries  would  bring  "  in- 
expressible cheer "  to  their  minds,  as,  in  the  same  circum- 
stances, they  had  already  brought  inexpressible  cheer  to  his 
own.  "  When  I  first  realized,"  he  says,  "  the  squalid  misery 
of  a  great  city  " — that  is,  of  the  latest  and  most  characteristic 
product  of  industrial  development — "  it  appalled  and  tormented 
me,  and  would  not  let  me  rest  for  thinking  of  what  caused  it 
and  how  it  could  be  cured  "  (p.  395).  Poverty  seemed  to  him 
to  be  most  abounding  and  most  intense  in  precisely  the  most 
advanced  countries  in  the  world.  "  Where  the  conditions  to 
which  material  progress  everywhere  tends  are  most  fully 
realized — that  is  to  say,  where  population  is  densest,  wealth 
greatest,  and  the  machinery  of  production  and  exchange  most 
highly  developed — we  find  the  deepest  poverty,  the  sharpest 
struggle  for  existence,  and  the  most  enforced  idleness  "  (p.  4). 
Nay,  poverty,  he  thought,  seemed  "  to  take  a  darker  aspect" 
in  every  community  at  the  very  moment  when  it  might  be 
reasonably  expected  to  brighten — at  the  moment  when  the 
community  made  a  distinct  advance  in  material  civilization, 
when  "  closer  settlements  and  a  more  intimate  connection  with 
the  rest  of  the  world  and  greater  utilization  of  labour-saving 
machinery  make  possible  greater  economies  in  production  and 
exchange,  and  wealth  increases  in  consequence,  not  merely  in 
the  aggregate,  but  in  proportion  to  population  "  (p.  4).  This 
process  of  impoverishment  might,  he  says,  escape  observation 
in  an  old  country,  because  such  a  country  has  generally  con- 
tained from  time  immemorial  a  completely  impoverished  class, 
who  could  not  be  further  impoverished  without  going  out  of 
existence  altogether,  but  in  a  new  settlement  like  California, 


444  Contemporary   Socialism. 

where  he  resided,  poverty  might  be  seen  almost  in  the  act  of 
being  produced  by  progress  before  one's  very  eyes.  While  the 
colony  had  nothing  better  than  log  cabins  or  cloth  shanties, 
"  there  was  no  destitution,"  though  there  might  be  no  luxury. 
But  "  the  tramp  comes  with  the  locomotive,  and  aim-houses 
and  prisons  are  as  surely  the  marks  of  '  material  progress ' 
as  are  costly  dwellings,  rich  warehouses,  and  magnificent 
churches "  (p.  4).  "  In  the  United  States  it  is  clear  that 
squalor  and  misery,  and  the  vices  and  crimes  that  spring  from 
them  everywhere,  increase  as  the  village  grows  to  the  city,  and 
the  march  of  development  brings  the  advantages  of  improved 
methods  of  production  and  exchange.  It  is  in  the  older  and 
richer  sections  of  the  Union  that  pauperism  and  distress  are 
becoming  most  painfully  apparent.  If  there  is  less  deep 
poverty  in  San  Francisco  than  in  New  York,  it  is  not  because 
San  Francisco  is  yet  behind  New  York  in  all  that  both  cities 
axe  striving  for?  When  San  Francisco  reaches  the  point 
where  New  York  now  is,  who  can  doubt  that  there  will  also 
be  ragged  and  barefooted  children  in  her  streets  ?  "  (p.  6).  The 
prospect  alarmed  and  agitated  him  profoundly.  It  deprived 
him,  as  it  has  deprived  so  many  of  the  continental  socialists,  of 
all  religious  belief,  for  if  the  real  order  of  things  make  an  ever- 
deepening  poverty  to  be  the  only  destiny  of  the  mass  of  man- 
kind, it  seemed  vain  to  dream  of  a  controlling  Providence  or  an 
immortal  life.  "  It  is  difficult,"  says  he,  "  to  reconcile  the  idea 
of  human  immortality  with  the  idea  that  nature  wastes  men 
by  constantly  bringing  them  into  being  where  there  is  no  room 
for  them.  It  is  impossible  to  reconcile  the  idea  of  an  intelligent 
and  beneficent  Creator  with  the  belief  that  the  wretchedness 
and  degradation,  which  are  the  lot  of  such  a  large  proportion 
of  human  kind,  result  from  His  enactments  ;  while  the  idea 
that  man  mentally  and  physically  is  the  result  of  slow  modifi- 
cations perpetuated  by  heredity,  irresistibly  suggests  the  idea 
that  it  is  the  race  life,  not  the  individual  life,  which  is  the 
object  of  human  existence.  Thus  has  vanished  with  many  of 
us,  and  is  still  vanishing  with  more  of  us,  that  belief  which  in 
the  battles  and  ills  of  life  affords  the  strongest  support  and 
deepest  consolation  "  (p.  396). 

The  inquiry  Mr.  George  undertook  was  consequently  one  of 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     445 

the  most  vital  personal  concern  to  himself,  and  we  are  glad  to 
think  that  it  has  been  the  means  of  restoring  to  him  the  faith 
and  hope  he  prizes  so  much,  "  Out  of  this  inquir}^,"  he  tells 
us,  "  has  come  to  me  something  I  did  not  think  to  find,  and  a 
faith  that  was  dead  revives  "  (p.  395). 

It  may  be  ungracious  to  disturb  a  peace  won  so  sorely  and 
offered  so  sincerely  to  others,  but  the  truth  is,  Mr.  George  has 
simply  lost  his  faith  by  one  illusion  and  recovered  it  again  by 
another.  He  first  tormented  his  brain  with  imaginary  facts, 
and  has  then  restored  it  with  erroneous  theories.  His  argu- 
ment is  really  little  better  than  a  prolonged  and,  we  will  own, 
athletic  beating  of  the  air ;  but  since  both  the  imaginary  facts 
and  the  erroneous  theories  of  which  it  is  composed  have 
obtained  considerable  vogue,  it  is  well  to  subject  it  to  a  critical 
examination.  I  shall  therefore  take  up  successively,  first,  his 
problem ;  second,  his  scientific  explanation ;  and  third,  his 
practical  remedy. 

I.  Mr.  George's  Problem. 

He  states  his  problem  thus  : — "  I  propose  to  seek  the  law 
which  associates  poverty  with  progress  and  increases  want  with 
advancing  wealth  "  (p.  8).  The  first  rule  of  scientific  investi- 
gation is  to  prove  one's  fact  before  proceeding  to  explain  it. 
"  There  are  more  false  facts  than  false  theories  in  the  world," 
and  a  short  examination  whether  a  phenomenon  actually  exists 
may  often  relieve  us  from  a  long  search  after  its  law.  Mr. 
George,  however,  does  not  observe  this  rule.  He  seeks  for 
the  law  of  a  phenomenon  without  first  verifying  the  pheno- 
menon itself — nay,  apparently  without  so  much  as  suspecting 
that  it  ought  to  be  verified.  He  assumes  a  particular  view  of 
the  social  situation  to  be  correct,  because  he  assumes  it.  But 
his  assumption  is  a  purely  subjective  and,  as  will  presently  be 
shown,  delusive  impression.  We  imagine  our  train  to  be  going 
back  when  a  parallel  train  is  going  faster  forward,  and  we  are 
apt  to  take  the  general  condition  of  mankind  to  be  retro- 
grading when  we  fix  our  eyes  exclusively  on  the  rapid  and 
remarkable  enrichment  of  the  fortunate  few.  What  Mr. 
George  calls  "  the  great  enigma  of  our  time "  is  just  the 
enigma  of  the    apparently  receding  train,  and  he  proceeds  to 


446  Contemporary   Socialism. 

solve  it  by  coiling  himself  in  a  corner  and  working  out  an 
elaborate  explanation  from  bis  own  inner  consciousness  "  by 
the  methods  of  political  economy,"  instead  of  taking  the  simple 
and  obvious  precaution  of  looking  out  of  the  opposite  carriage- 
window  and  testing,  by  hard  facts,  whether  his  impression 
was  correct.  Had  he  taken  this  precaution,  had  he  resorted 
to  an  examination  of  the  actual  state  of  the  facts,  he  would 
have  found  good  reason  to  change  his  impression ;  he  would 
have  found  that  on  the  whole  poverty  is  not  increasing,  that 
in  proportion  to  population  it  is  considerably  less  in  the  more 
advanced  industrial  countries  than  in  the  less  advanced  ones, 
and  that  he  had  simply  mistaken  unequal  rates  of  progress 
for  simultaneous  movements  of  progress  and  decline.  His 
impression,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  a  prejudice  of  considerable 
currency ;  there  are  many  who  tell  us,  as  he  does,  that  want 
is  growing  ^gari  passu  with  wealth,  and  even  gaining  on  it ; 
that  if  the  rich  are  getting  richer,  the  poor  are  at  the  same 
time  getting  poorer  ;  but  it  is  a  question  of  fact,  and  yet  no 
one  has  ever  seriously  tried  to  prove  the  assertion  by  an 
appeal  to  fact.  That  Mr.  George  should  have  neglected  to 
submit  it  to  such  a  test  is  the  more  remarkable,  because  he 
was,  as  he  has  told  us,  "  tormented  "  in  mind  by  it,  and 
because  he  acknowledges  that  it  is  a  "paradox"  —  i.e., 
against  the  reason  of  the  case,  and  that  it  is  also,  to  some 
extent  at  least,  against  appearances.  He  owns,  for  example, 
that  "  the  average  of  comfort,  leisure,  and  refinement  has  been 
raised,"  and  that  though  the  lowest  class  may  not  share  in 
these  gains,  yet  even  they  have  in  some  ways  improved.  "  I 
do  not  mean,"  he  says,  "  that  the  condition  of  the  lowest  class 
has  nowhere  nor  in  anything  been  improved,  but  that  there 
is  nowhere  any  improvement  which  can  be  credited  to  in- 
creased productive  power.  I  mean  that  the  tendency  of  what 
we  call  material  progress  is  in  no  wise  to  improve  the  condition 
of  the  lowest  class  in  the  essentials  of  healthy,  happy  human 
life.  Nay,  more,  that  it  is  to  still  further  depress  the  condition 
of  the  lowest  class.  The  new  forces,  elevating  in  their  nature 
though  they  be,  do  not  act  upon  the  social  fabric  from  under- 
neath, as  was  for  a  long  time  hoped  and  believed,  but  strike  it 
at  a  point   intermediate  between  top  and  bottom.     It  is  as 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     447 

though  an  immense  wedge  were  being  forced,  not  underneath 
society,  but  through  society.  Those  who  are  above  the  point 
of  separation  are  elevated,  but  those  who  are  below  are 
crushed  down"  (p.  6).  From  this  passage  it  would  appear 
that,  according  to  Mr.  George,  the  condition  of  all  except  the 
lowest  class  has  improved  in  consequence  of  material  progress, 
and  that  the  condition  of  the  lowest  class  has  improved  in 
spite  of  it.  He  does  not  undertake,  it  seems,  to  affirm  of  any 
class  that  it  has,  as  a  matter  of  actual  fact,  become  impover- 
ished in  the  course  of  social  development,  but  only  that  there 
is  a  tendency  in  the  increase  of  productive  power — in  "  the 
new  productive  forces  " — in  "  material  progress  " — to  impover- 
ish the  lower  strata  of  society.  But  then  he  contends  that 
these  forces  are  practising  exactly  the  same  tendency  on  some 
of  the  highest  strata,  on  classes  that  we  know  have  been 
growing  richer  and  richer  every  day.  For  he  tells  us  that 
these  new  forces,  entering  our  social  system  like  a  wedge, 
depress  all  who  happen  to  be  on  the  wrong  side ;  and  we  shall 
presently  discover  that  this  unhappy  company  on  the  wrong 
side  of  the  wedge  embraces  many  groups  of  persons  who  will 
be  excessively  astonished  to  learn  that  they  are  there.  It 
includes,  not  only  the  poor  labourers  who  live  on  wages,  but 
the  great  capitalists  who  live  on  profits ;  the  great  cotton 
spinners,  ironmasters,  brewers,  bankers,  contractors ;  the  very 
men,  in  short,  of  all  the  world,  whom  the  new  productive 
forces  have  most  conspicuously  and  enormously  enriched.  I 
shall  revert  to  this  preposterous  conclusion  later  on,  but  at 
present  it  is  enough  to  say  that  a  tide,  which  so  many  have 
swum  against  and  swum  to  fortune,  cannot  be  very  formid- 
able, and  at  all  events  can  furnish  no  clue  whatever  to  the 
possible  condition  of  those  who  are  exposed  to  it.  For  that 
we  have  only  one  resort.  It  is  a  plain  question  of  fact — is 
poverty  really  increasing  ?  Are  the  poor  really  getting  poorer  ? 
And  this  can  only  be  competently  decided  by  the  ordinary 
inductive  evidence  of  facts.  The  data  of  this  kind  which  we 
possess  for  settling  the  question  may  not  be  so  exact  as  would 
be  desirable,  but  there  is  no  higher  tribunal  to  which  we  can 
appeal.  The  question  must  be  answered  by  them,  or  not 
answered  at  all. 


448  Contejnporary   Socialism. 

Now  any  data  we  have  all  conduct  to  the  conclusion  that 
poverty  is  not  increasing.  If  poverty  were  increasing  with 
the  increase  of  wealth,  it  would  show  itself  either  in  an 
increase  of  pauperism,  or  in  a  decline  in  the  general  standard 
of  living  among  the  labouring  classes,  or  in  a  fall  in  the 
average  duration  of  life,  and  these  symptoms  would  be  most 
acute  in  the  countries  that  are  most  wealthy  and  progressive. 
Now,  let  us  take  England  as  a  crucial  case  of  a  country  in  a 
very  advanced  stage  of  industrial  development.  Is  English 
pauperism  greater  now  than  it  was  before  the  "  new  produc- 
tive forces  "  entared  the  country  ?  Is  the  general  standard  of 
living  among  the  labouring  classes  lower  ?  Is  the  average 
duration  of  life  less  ?  Are  poverty  and  the  various  symptoms 
of  poverty  more  acute  in  England  than  in  more  backward 
countries  ? 

In  a  foot-note  to  the  passage  last  quoted  from  his  book,  Mr. 
George  explains  that  the  improvement  he  recognises  in  the 
lot  of  the  lowest  class  does  not  consist  in  greater  ability  to 
obtain  the  necessaries  of  life.  Does  he  mean,  because  more 
things  are  now  reckoned  among  the  necessaries  of  life?  If 
so,  we  fear  there  is  no  chance  of  that  difficulty  being  removed, 
nor  indeed  is  there  any  reason  for  desiring  it  to  be  so.  Men's 
wants  will  always  increase  with  their  incomes,  and  the  struggle 
to  make  both  ends  meet  may  in  that  case  indefinitely  continue. 
But  the  fact  remains  that  they  have  more  wants  satisfied 
than  before,  that  they  realize  a  higher  standard  of  life,  and 
that  is  the  mark,  and  indeed  the  substance,  of  a  more  diffused 
comfort  and  civilization.  It  is  true  that  as  the  general 
standard  of  living  rises,  people  feel  the  pinch  of  poverty  at  a 
higher  level  than  before,  and  become  pauperized  for  the  want 
of  comforts  that  are  now  necessary,  but  which  formerly  few 
ever  dreamt  of  possessing.  To  have  no  shoes  is  a  mark  of 
extreme  indigence  to-day ;  it  was  the  common  lot  a  century 
ago.  People  may  be  growing  in  general  comfort,  and  yet 
their  ability  to  obtain  necessaries  remain  stationary,  because 
their  customary  circle  of  necessaries  may  be  always  widening. 
The  real  sign  of  an  advancing  poverty  is  when  the  circle  of 
recognised  necessaries  is  getting  narrow,  and  yet  men  have 
more  difficulty  in  obtaining  them  than  before  ;  in  other  words. 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     449 

1st,  when  tlie  average  scale  of  living  falls;  and  2nd,  when 
a  larger  proportion  of  the  people  are  unable  to  obtain  it, 
reduced  though  it  be.  Now,  in  England,  the  contrary  has 
happened  ;  the  general  standard  of  living  has  risen,  and  the 
proportion  of  those  who  are  unable  to  obtain  it  has  declined. 

In  a  preceding  chapter  I  adduced  evidence  to  show  how 
greatly  improved  the  working-class  standard  of  living  now  is 
from  what  it  was  two  hundred  years  ago,  in  the  good  old 
times  socialist  writers  hke  to  sing  of,  when  men  had  not  yet 
sought  out  many  inventions  and  the  world  was  not  oppressed 
by  the  large  system  of  production.  But  let  us  tap  the  line 
between  then  and  now  at  what  point  we  may,  and  we  find 
the  same  result ;  the  tendency  is  always  to  a  better  style  of 
living.  Mr.  Giffen,  for  example,  in  his  address,  as  President 
of  the  Statistical  Society,  on  20th  November,  1883,  compares 
the  condition  of  the  working  classes  to-day  with  their  con- 
dition half  a  century  since,  and  concludes  from  official  returns 
that  while  the  sovereign  goes  as  far  as  it  did  then  in  the 
purchase  of  commodities,  money  wages  have  increased  from 
30  to  100  per  cent.,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  hours  of  labour 
have  been  reduced  some  20  per  cent.  Except  butcher-meat 
and  house-rent,  every  other  element  of  the  working  man's 
expenditure  is  cheaper,  and  butcher-meat  was  fifty  j^ears  ago 
hardly  an  element  of  his  expenditure  at  all,  and  the  kind  of 
house  he  then  occupied  was  much  inferior,  as  a  rule,  to  what 
he  occupies  now,  bad  as  the  latter  may  in  many  cases  be. 

But  while  the  general  standard  of  comfort  has  been  rising, 
the  proportion  of  the  population  who  are  unable  to  obtain  it 
has  been  diminishing.  I  have  already  stated  that  King 
estimated  the  number  of  persons  in  receipt  of  rehef  in  England 
and  Wales  in  1688  at  900,000.  Now  in  1882  the  average 
number  in  receipt  of  relief  at  one  and  the  same  time  was, 
according  to  official  returns,  803,719 ;  and  if  we  are  right  in 
doubling  that  figure  to  find  the  whole  number  of  paupers 
relieved  in  the  course  of  the  year  (that  being  the  proportion 
borne  in  Scotland),  then  we  may  conclude  that  there  are  some 
1,600,000  paupers  in  England  and  Wales  at  the  present  day. 
That  is  to  say,  with  nearly  five  times  the  population,  we  have 
less  than  twice  the  pauperism.     The  result  is  far  from  being 

a  a 


450  Contemporary   Socialism. 

entirely  gratifying  ;  a  million  and  a  half  of  paupers  (with  more 
than  half  as  many  again  in  Ireland  and  Scotland)  constitute  a 
very  grave  problem,  or  rather  ganglion  of  problems ;  but  the 
fact  supplies  a  decisive  enough  refutation  of  the  pessimist  idea 
that  the  actual  movement  of  pauperism  has  been  one  of  in- 
crease instead  of  one  of  decrease. 

During  these  two  hundred  years  there  is  no  period  in  which 
wealth  and  productive  power  multiplied  more  rapidly  than  the 
last  thirty  years,  and,  therefore,  if  Mr.  George's  ideas  were 
correct,  there  is  no  period  that  should  show  such  a  marked 
increase  of  pauperism.  What  do  we  find  ?  We  find  that 
pauperism  has  steadily  declined  in  England  during  that  period. 
The  decrease  has  been  gradual  and  attended  with  no  such 
striking  interruptions  as  were  frequently  exhibited  in  former 
times.  But  the  most  remarkable  feature  about  it  is  that  the 
number  of  able-bodied  paupers  has  diminished  by  nearly  a 
half;  from  201,644  in  1849  to  106,280  in  1882.  That  is  the 
very  class  of  paupers  whom  Mr.  George  represents  it  to  be  the 
special  effect  of  increasing  productive  power  to  multiply,  and 
yet,  though  wealth  and  productive  power  have  made  almost 
unexampled  progress,  and  though  the  population  has  also 
considerably  risen  in  the  interval,  we  have  not  more  than  half 
as  many  of  this  class  of  paupers  now  as  we  had  thirty  years 
ago.  No  doubt  this  result  is  due  in  part  to  a  better  system  of 
administering  relief,  just  as  it  is  due  in  part  to  the  growth  of 
trade  unions  and  friendly  societies,  to  the  extension  of  savings 
banks,  and  to  other  agencies.  But  if  Mr.  George's  principle  is 
true,  could  such  a  result  have  taken  place  at  all  ?  If  "  material 
progress  "  has  a  tendency  to  multiply  "  tramps  "  or  able-bodied 
paupers,  the  tendency  must  be  weak,  indeed,  when  a  little 
judicious  management  on  the  part  of  public  bodies,  or  of  work- 
ing men  themselves,  would  not  only  counteract  it,  but  turn 
the  current  so  strongly  the  other  way.  But  the  truth  is  that 
the  "tramp  "  has  never  been  so  little  of  a  care  in  this  country 
as  at  the  present  hour,  and  that  it  is  to  material  progress  we 
owe  his  disappearance.  He  was  a  very  serious  problem  to  our 
ancestors  for  centuries  and  centuries.  The  whole  history  of 
our  social  legislation  is  a  history  of  ineffectual  attempts  to  deal 
with  vagrants  and  sturdy  beggars,  and  we  are  less  troubled 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     451 

■with  them  now  mainly  because  industrial  progress  has  given 
them  immensely  more  opportunities  of  making  an  honest  and 
regular  living.  Industrial  progress  has  all  along  been  creating 
work  and  annihilating  tramps,  but  it  has  all  along  been 
followed  by  absurd  and  perverse  complaints  like  Mr.  George's, 
that  it  was  onl}'-  creating  tramps  and  annihilating  opportu- 
nities of  work.  Mr.  George  says  the  tramp  comes  with  the 
locomotive,  but  a  writer  in  1673  (quoted  by  Sir  F.  Eden, 
"  State  of  the  Poor,"  I.,  190)  declared  that  he  came  with  the 
stage-coach.  He  pictures  the  happy  age  before  stage-coaches, 
when  (as  Mr.  George  says  of  California)  there  might  be  no 
luxury,  but  there  was  no  destitution,  when  every  man  kept 
one  horse  for  himself  and  another  for  his  groom.  But  with 
the  introduction  of  the  stage-coach  the  scene  was  changed. 
People  got  anywhere  for  a  few  shillings,  and  ceased  to  keep 
horses.  They  were  so  much  the  richer  themselves,  but  their 
grooms  were  ruined  and  thrown  upon  the  world  without  horse 
or  home.  Now  class  privations  like  these  are  incidental  to 
industrial  transformations,  and  in  an  age  of  unusual  industrial 
transitions  like  ours,  they  may  be  expected  to  be  unusually 
numerous.  But  the  effect  of  material  progress  on  the  whole  is 
to  prevent  such  privations  rather  than  cause  them.  It  multi- 
plies temporary  redundancies  of  labour,  but  it  multiplies  still 
more  the  opportunities  for  permanently  relieving  them.  Why 
are  we  now  free  from  the  old  scourges  of  famine  and  famine 
prices  ?  Partly  because  of  free  trade,  but  mainly  because  of 
improved  communications,  because  of  the  steamer  and  the 
locomotive.  Even  commercial  crises  are  getting  less  severe  in 
their  effects.  The  distress  among  our  labouring  classes  during 
the  American  Civil  War  was  nothing  compared  with  the 
suffering  under  the  complete  paralysis  of  industry  that  followed 
the  close  of  the  great  continental  war  in  1815.  Miss  Martineau 
tells  us  of  that  time : — "  The  poor  abandoned  their  residences, 
whole  parishes  were  deserted,  and  crowds  of  paupers,  in- 
creasing in  numbers  as  they  went  from  parish  to  parish, 
spread  wider  and  wider  this  awful  desolation."  (History  of 
England,  I.  39.)  No  such  severe  redundancy  of  labour  has 
taken  place  since  then,  and  the  redundancies  that  attend 
changes  of  fashion  or  of  mechanical  agency,  though  they  un- 


452  Contemporary  Socialism. 

doubtedly  constitute  a  serious  difficulty,  are  yet  lightened  and 
not  aggravated  by  the  various  and  complex  ramifications  of 
modern  industry.  Except  a  new  colony,  there  is  no  place 
where  new-comers  are  so  easily  taken  on  as  in  a  highly 
developed  industrial  country.  There  are  more  poor  in  Norway 
than  in  England,  and  they  are  increasing;  yet  in  Norway  there 
is  no  rent  and  no  great  cities.  Mr.  George  may  say,  and  in 
fact  he  does  say,  that  in  old  countries  the  number  of  paupers  is 
reduced  by  simple  starvation ;  but  if  that  were  so,  the  death- 
rate  would  be  increasing.  But  in  England  the  death-rate  is 
really  diminishing.  Let  us  again  quote  from  Mr.  Giffen's 
address  : — "  Mr.  Humphreys,  in  his  able  paper  on  '  The  Recent 
Decline  in  the  English  Death-Rate,'  showed  conclusively 
that  the  decline  in  the  death-rate  in  the  last  five  years,  1876- 
80,  as  compared  with  the  rates  on  which  Dr.  Farr's  English 
Life  Table  was  based — rates  obtained  in  the  years  1841-45 — 
amounted  to  from  28  to  32  per  cent,  in  males  at  each  quinquen- 
nial of  the  20  years,  6-25,  and  in  females  at  each  quinquennial 
from  5-25,  to  between  24  and  35  per  cent. ;  and  that  the  effect 
of  this  decline  in  the  death-rate  was  to  raise  the  mean  duration 
of  life  among  males  from  39*9  to  41'9  years,  a  gain  of  two  years 
in  the  average  duration  of  life.  Mr.  Humphreys  also  showed 
that  by  far  the  larger  proportion  of  the  increased  duration  of 
human  life  in  England  was  lived  at  useful  ages,  and  not  at  the 
dependent  ages  of  either  childhood  or  old  age.  No  such  change 
could  have  taken  place  without  a  great  increase  in  the  vitality 
of  the  people.  Not  only  had  fewer  died,  but  the  masses  who 
had  lived  must  have  been  healthier  and  suffered  less  from 
sickness  than  they  did.  From  the  nature  of  the  figures  also 
the  improvement  must  also  have  been  among  the  masses,  and 
not  among  a  select  class  whose  figures  threw  up  the  average. 
The  improvement,  too,  actually  recorded  obviously  related  to  a 
transition  stage.  Many  of  the  improvements  in  the  condition 
of  the  working  classes  had  only  taken  place  quite  recently. 
They  had  not,  therefore,  affected  all  through  their  existence 
any  but  the  youngest  lives.  When  the  improvements  had 
been  in  existence  for  a  longer  period,  so  that  the  lives  of  all 
who  are  living  had  been  affected  from  birth  by  the  changed 
conditions,  we  might  infer  that  even  a  greater  gain  in  the 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     453 

mean  duration  of  life  will  be  shown.  As  it  was  the  gain  was 
enormous.  Whether  it  was  due  to  better  and  more  abundant 
food  and  clothing,  to  better  sanitation,  to  better  knowledge  of 
medicine,  or  to  these  and  other  causes  combined,  improvement 
had  beyond  all  question  occurred."  The  decline  of  pauperism 
in  this  country  then  is  not  due  to  any  increasing  mortality  in 
the  classes  from  which  the  majority  of  the  paupers  come ;  but 
it  is  one  among  many  other  proofs  that  these  classes  have 
profited,  like  their  neighbours,  by  the  course  of  material  pro- 
gress. They  may  not  have  profited  in  the  same  degree  as 
some  others,  or  in  the  degree  we  think  desirable  and  believe  to 
be  yet  possible  for  themselves.  But  they  have  profited.  The 
situation  is  really,  as  we  have  said,  one  of  unequal  rates  of  pro- 
gress, and  not  one  of  simultaneous  progress  and  decline. 

And  this  Mr.  George  seems,  at  a  later  stage  of  his  argument, 
freely  to  admit.  For  when  he  comes  to  state  "  the  law  which 
associates  poverty  with  progress  and  increases  want  with 
advancing  wealth,"  he  explains  that  he  does  not  contend  that 
poverty  is  associated  with  progress  at  all,  but  only  that  a 
lessening  proportion  of  the  gross  produce  of  society  falls  to 
some  classes  ;  that  want  may  possibly  not  in  the  least  increase 
with  advancing  wealth ;  that  all  classes  may  be  the  wealthier 
for  the  growth  of  wealth;  and  practically,  that  the  only 
evidence  of  the  poverty  of  the  poor  is  the  greater  richness  of 
the  rich.  It  seems  he  is  not  explaining  in  any  wise  why  the 
poor  are  getting  poorer,  but  only  why  they  are  not  getting 
rich  so  fast  as  some  of  their  neighbours.  We  must  quote 
chapter  and  verse  for  this  extraordinary  vacillation  about  the 
very  problem  he  wants  to  solve.  "  Perhaps,"  he  says,  in  the 
last  paragraph  of  Book  III.,  chapter  vi.  (p.  154),  "  it  may  be 
well  to  remind  the  reader,  before  closing  this  chapter,  of  what 
has  been  before  stated — that  I  am  using  the  word  wages,  not 
in  the  sense  of  a  quantity,  but  in  the  sense  of  a  proportion. 
When  I  say  that  wages  fall  as  rent  rises,  I  do  not  mean  that 
the  quantity  of  wealth  obtained  by  labourers  as  wages  is 
necessarily  less,  but  that  the  proportion  which  it  bears  to  the 
whole  produce  is  necessarily  less.  The  proportion  may  diminish 
while  the  quantity  remains  the  same,  or  even  increases.  If  the 
margin  of  cultivation  descends  from  the  productive  point,  which 


454  Contemporary  Socialism. 

we  will  call  twenty-five,  to  the  productive  point  we  will  call 
twenty,  the  rent  of  all  lauds  that  before  paid  rent  will  increase 
by  this  difference,  and  the  proportion  of  the  whole  produce 
which  goes  to  labourers  as  wages  will  to  the  same  extent 
diminish ;  but  if  in  the  meantime  the  advance  of  the  arts  or 
economies  that  become  possible  with  greater  population  have 
so  increased  the  productive  power  of  labour  that  at  twenty  the 
same  exertion  will  produce  as  much  wealth  as  before  at  twenty- 
five,  labourers  will  get  as  wages  as  great  a  quantity  as  before, 
and  the  relative  fall  of  wages  will  not  be  noticeable  in  any 
diminution  of  the  necessaries  or  comforts  of  the  labourer,  but 
only  in  the  increased  value  of  land  and  the  greater  comforts 
and  more  lavish  expenditure  of  the  rent-receiving  class."  It 
thus  turns  out  that  the  alleged  impoverishment  of  the 
labouring  classes  through  the  increasing  wealth  of  society — 
the  sad  and  desolating  spectacle  that  "  tormented  "  Mr.  George 
"  so  that  he  could  not  rest " — the  cruel  mystery  that  robbed 
him  even  of  his  religious  faith,  and  moved  him  to  write  his 
powerful  but  inconclusive  book — this  was  no  real  impoverish- 
ment at  all,  but  only  an  apparent  one.  It  is  not  so  much  as 
"  noticeable  "  in  "  any  diminution  of  the  necessaries  or  com- 
forts of  the  labourer  " ;  it  is  noticeable  only  in  "  the  greater 
comforts  and  more  lavish  expenditure  of  the  rent-receiving 
class."  The  poverty  of  the  labourer  consists  in  the  greater 
wealth  of  the  landlord.  The  poor  are  not  poorer ;  they  only 
seem,  poorer,  because  certain  of  the  rich  have  got  so  much 
richer.  The  problem  is  thus,  on  Mr.  George's  own  showing, 
just  the  mock  problem  of  the  apparently  receding  train. 

But  let  us  take  up  this  new  issue.  Mr.  George's  assertion 
now  is  that  wages  are  a  less  proportion  of  the  gross  produce  of 
the  country  than  they  were,  because  rent  absorbs  a  corres- 
pondingly larger  proportion  than  it  did.  Is  that  so?  Mr. 
George  does  not  think  of  showing  that  it  is :  he  assumes  it. 
without  apparently  ha\ang  the  smallest  pretence  of  fact  for  his 
assertion.  His  assumption  is  entirely  wrong.  Rent  is  a  much 
smaller  proportion  of  the  gross  produce  of  the  country  than  it 
was,  and  wages  are  not  only  in  their  aggregate  a  larger  pro- 
portion of  the  aggregate  produce  of  the  country,  but  in  their 
average   a  larger  proportion  of    the    'per    capita  production. 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry   George.     455 

There  is  no  need  to  rest  in  random  assumptions  on  the  matter. 
The  gross  annual  produce  of  the  United  Kingdom  is  reckoned  at 
present  at  twelve  hundred  millions  sterling,  and  the  rent  of  the 
land  at  less  than  seventy  millions,  or  about  one  seventeenth  of 
the  whole.  In  the  time  of  King  and  Davenant,  200  years  ago  or 
so,  the  annual  produce  of  England  and  Wales  was  forty-three 
millions,  and  the  rent  of  land  ten  millions — little  less  than 
one-fourth.  (Davenant's  Works,  iv.,  71.)  It  is  hardly  worth 
while,-  however,  making  a  formal  assertion  of  so  self-evident  a 
proposition  as  that  rent  constitutes  a  much  smaller  fraction  of 
the  national  income  now  that  wealth  is  invested  so  vastly  in 
trade  and  manufactures,  than  it  did  when  agriculture  was  the 
one  great  business  of  life  ;  but  it  is  perhaps  better  worth  show- 
ing that  rent  does  not  absorb  a  greater  proportion  even  of  the 
agricultural  produce  of  the  country  than  it  used  to  do.  Rent 
has  risen  nearly  200  per  cent,  in  the  course  of  the  last  hundred 
years,  but  it  does  not  take  one  whit  a  larger  share  of  the  gross 
produce  of  the  land  than  it  took  then. 

According  to  the  calculations  of  Davenant  and  King,  the 
gross  produce  of  agriculture  amounted,  at  the  time  of  the  Re- 
volution, to  four  rents,  or,  allowing  for  tithes,  to  three  rents ; 
but  this  was  only  on  the  arable.  The  produce  of  other  land, 
natural  pasture  and  forest  land  and  the  like,  came  to  less  than 
two  rents ;  so  that  while  the  rent  of  arable  was  not  more  than 
a  third  of  the  produce  (or,  to  state  it  exactly,  27  per  cent.),  the 
rent  of  land  generally  was  more  nearly  a  half.    The  figures  are — 

Gross  Produce.  Kent. 

Arable  Land £9,079,000        £2,480,000 

Other  Land 12,000,000  7,000,000 

Total £21,079,000       £9,480,000 

(Davenant's  Works,  iv.,  70.)  Arthur  Young,  a  century  later, 
declares  that  the  doctrine  of  three  rents  was  already  exploded, 
and  that  farmers  had  begun  to  expend  so  much  on  high  culti- 
vation that  they  would  be  very  ill  content  if  they  produced 
no  more  than  three  rents.  In  fact,  he  declares  that  even  in 
former  times  rent  could  never  have  amounted  to  a  third  of  the 
produce,  except  on  lands  of  the  very  first  quality,  and  that  a 
fourth  was  more  probably  the  average  proportion.      In  his 


45 6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

"  Political  Arithmetic,"  published  in  1779  (Part  II.,  pp.  27,  31), 
he  estimated  the  gross  agricultural  produce  of  England 
(exclusive  of  Wales)  at  £72,826,827,  and  the  gross  agricultural 
rental  at  £19,200,000,  or  26  per  cent., — very  nearly  one-fourth 
of  the  produce.  To  come  down  nearer  our  own  time, 
M'Culloch  estimated  the  gross  agricultural  produce  of  England 
and  Wales  in  18-42-3  to  have  been  £141,606,857,  and  the  gross 
agricultural  rental  £37,795,905,  or  26  per  cent,  of  the  produce. 
("  Statistical  Account  of  the  British  Empire,"  3rd  Edition,  p. 
553.)  The  gross  agricultural  produce  of  the  United  Kingdom 
is  now  270  millions  sterling,  and  the  gross  agricultural  rental 
70  millions.  Mr.  Mulhall,  indeed,  estimates  it  at  only  58 
milhons ;  but  at  70  millions  it  would  be,  as  nearly  as  possible, 
26  per  cent., — curiously  enough  the  same  figure  exactly  as  in 
1843  and  in  1779,  and  almost  the  same  as  in  1689. 

So  far  of  rent ;  now  as  to  wages.  I  have  already,  in  a  for- 
mer chapter  (p.  301),  produced  some  evidence  to  show  that  the 
average  labourer's  wages  bears  a  higher  proportion  to  the 
average  income  of  the  country  than  it  did  in  former  times,  or, 
in  other  words,  that  the  labourer  enjoys  a  higher  i^er  capita 
share  of  the  gross  annual  produce  of  the  country  as  measured 
in  money,  and  I  need  not  repeat  that  evidence  here.  Mr.  Mul- 
hall has  made  some  calculations  which  confirm  the  conclusions 
there  drawn.  ("  Dictionary  of  Statistics,"  p.  246.)  He  com- 
pares the  income  of  the  people  of  the  United  Kingdom  at  the 
three  epochs  of  1688, 1800,  and  1883.  He  divides  the  people  into 
classes  and  numbers  them  by  families,  stating  the  total  income 
of  each  class  and  the  total  number  of  families  among  whom  it 
was  divided.  I  select  the  two  columns  containing  the  results 
for  the  whole  population  and  the  results  for  the  working  class. 

(1)  Number  of  Families  : — 

A.D.  1688.        A.D.  1800.        A.D.  1883. 
Whole  Nation    .     .     1,200,000    1,780,000    6,575,000 

Working  Class   .     .       759,000    1,117,000    4,629,000 

(2)  Earnings: — 

A.D.  1688.  A.D.  1880.  A.D.  1883. 

i^tk)n  }     ^^^'^^^'^^    £230,000,000    £1,265,000,000 
^ClasT^  }        11'000,000         78,000,000         447,000,000 


Tlie  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     457 

A  single  glance  at  these  tables  will  show  that  the  aggregate 
wages  of  the  country  constitutes  a  slightly  better  proportion  of 
its  aggregate  annual  income  at  present  than  in  1800,  and  a 
decidedly  better  proportion  than  in  1688.  But  if  we  look,  not 
to  the  aggregate  income  of  the  class,  but  to  the  average 
income  of  the  individual  families  it  contains,  the  result  is 
in  nowise  more  favourable  to  Mr.  George's  assumption.  The 
following  table  will  show  that : — 

(3)  Average  Income  of  Families : — 

A.D.  1688.        A.D.  1880.        A.D.  1883. 
Whole  Nation  ....    £37  £129  £189 

Working  Class.     ...       14  69  96 

The  average  working-class  income  was  thus  37  per  cent,  of 
the  average  income  of  the  country  in  1688 ;  63  per  cent,  of 
it  in  1800;  and  51  per  cent,  of  it  in  1883.  The  difference 
between  the  last  two  epochs  is  so  indecisive  that  we  may 
count  them  practically  identical.  The  real  position  of  affairs 
then  as  to  the  proportion  of  wages  to  national  produce  is 
this,  that  wages  enjoy  a  considerably  larger  share  of  that 
produce  now  than  they  did  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  about  the  same  proportion  as  they  enjoyed  at  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth.  If,  accordingly,  Mr.  George  resolves  to 
stick  by  the  point  of  proportion,  he  would  therefore  have  no 
more  solid  ground  to  stand  on  than  on  the  point  of  quantity. 
Rent,  as  a  proportion  of  the  entire  wealth  of  the  country,  has 
enormously  declined,  and  even  as  a  proportion  of  agricultural 
wealth  has  not  increased.  Wages  as  a  proportion  have  not 
declined,  but  rather  risen. 

These,  among  other  things,  are  indications  that  we  have 
been  concluding  too  hastily  that  concentration  of  wealth  is 
the  characteristic  tendency  of  the  time,  and  ignoring  the 
existence  of  many  minor  and  less  conspicuous  forces  which 
have  been  working  in  the  contrary  direction.  The  real 
prospect  at  present  is  towards  diffusion.  The  enormous 
accumulations  that  have  marked  the  last  hundred  and  fifty 
years  have  owed  their  existence  largely  to  causes  that  cannot 
be  expected  to  endure ;  in  the  case  of  land,  to  vicious  laws 
directly  favouring  aggregations  ;  and  in  the  case  of  trade,  to 


458  Contemporary  Socialism. 

tlie  unparalleled  rapidity  of  the  transformations  and  exten- 
sions industry  has  undergone  during  the  period.  Great  in- 
equalities are  natural  to  such  a  time.  Huge  fortunes  are  made 
by  pioneers,  and  will  not  be  easily  made  by  their  successors. 
Railway  contracting  will  never  produce  again  a  millionaire  like 
Mr.  Brassey,  but  it  will  continue  to  furnish  the  means  of  many 
moderate  fortunes  and  competencies.  So  with  every  other 
new  branch  of  industry,  or  new  field  of  investment.  The 
lucky  person  who  is  the  first  to  occupy  it  may  rise  to  great 
riches,  but  his  successors  will  divide  the  custom,  and  instead 
of  one  large  fortune,  there  will  be  a  considerable  number  of 
small  ones.  Mr,  George  himself  admits  that  the  opportunities 
of  making  large  fortunes  are  growing  more  hmited,  but  oddly 
enough  he  considers  the  fact  to  be  a  signal  evidence  of  "  the 
march  of  concentration."  In  his  "  Social  Problems  "  (p.  69) 
he  writes  :  "  An  English  friend,  a  wealthy  retired  Manchester 
manufacturer,  once  told  me  the  story  of  his  life.  How  he 
went  to  work  at  eight  years  of  age,  helping  to  make  twine, 
when  twine  was  made  entirely  by  hand.  How,  when  a  young 
man,  he  walked  to  Manchester,  and  having  got  credit  for  a 
bale  of  flax,  made  it  into  twine  and  sold  it.  How,  building 
up  a  little  trade,  he  got  others  to  work  for  him.  How,  when 
machinery  began  to  be  invented,  and  steam  was  introduced, 
he  took  advantage  of  them,  until  he  had  a  big  factory  and 
made  a  fortune,  when  he  withdrew  to  spend  the  rest  of  his 
days  at  ease,  leaving  his  business  to  his  son.  *  Supposing  you 
were  a  young  man  now,'  said  I,  '  could  you  walk  into  Man- 
chester and  do  that  again  ?  '  *  No,'  replied  he,  *  no  one  could. 
I  couldn't  with  fifty  thousand  pounds  in  place  of  my  five 
shillings.'  "  The  true  moral  of  this  little  story  is  of  course 
that  it  is  more  difficult  to  amass  a  huge  fortune  in  that  par- 
ticular hue  now  than  when  machinery  was  young,  and  that 
a  man  with  £50,000  to  start  with  must  now  content  himself 
with  a  much  poorer  figure  than  Mr.  George's  lucky  friend 
made  out  of  nothing.  "Would  Mr.  George  compute  what 
limit  could  be  set  to  the  sum  his  friend  might  have  amassed, 
had  he  started  in  those  golden  days  with  £50,000  instead  of 
five  shiUings?  Even  as  things  stood,  his  solitary  success 
did  not  distribute  the  wealth  of  Manchester  any  the  better 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     459 

among  his  fellow-spinners  who  were  not  fortunate  enough 
to  get  credit  for  a  bale  of  flax,  or  pushing  enough  to  ask  for  it, 
and  were  not  in  a  position  to  take  advantage  of  the  first 
introduction  of  a  new  power,  and  rise  with  it  to  great  wealth. 
That  the  stream  of  things  is  now  making  for  more  moderate 
fortunes,  and  more  of  them,  is  confirmed  by  the  testamentary 
statistics  of  the  previous  ten  years  published  some  time  ago  by 
the  Spectator  newspaper.  These  figures  show  that  the  number 
of  fortunes  of  the  first  rank  left  during  that  period  has  been 
very  much  less  than  it  was  in  the  preceding  ten  years,  but 
that  the  number  of  moderate  fortunes  has  been  very  much 
larger. 

What  the  future  may  hide  in  it  I  shall  not  venture  to  divine. 
It  will  no  doubt  bring  upon  industry  fresh  transformations,  but 
we  can  hardly  expect  them  to  be  so  numerous  or  so  rapid  as 
in  the  brilliant  era  of  industrial  progress  and  colonial  develop- 
ment we  have  passed  through,  and  some  at  least  of  the  changes 
that  are  in  store  for  us  point,  as  I  have  shown  in  the  introduc- 
tory chapter  of  this  book,  to  a  greater  diffusion  rather  than  a 
greater  concentration  in  the  future.  Mr.  George  says :  "  All 
the  currents  of  the  time  run  to  concentration.  To  successfully 
resist  it  we  must  throttle  steam  and  discharge  electricity  from 
human  service  "  (p.  232).  Now  steam  has  undoubtedly  been  a 
great  concentrator,  but  electricity,  which  is  likely  to  take  its 
place  in  the  future,  will  to  all  appearance  be  as  great  a  dis- 
tributor. Mr.  George  is  equally  mistaken  regarding  the  real 
effect  of  the  other  "  currents  of  the  time."  "  That  concentra- 
tion is  the  order  of  development,"  says  he,  "  there  can  be  no 
mistaking — the  concentration  of  people  in  large  cities,  the 
concentration  of  handicrafts  in  large  factories,  the  concentra- 
tion of  transportation  by  railroad  and  steamship  lines,  and 
of  agricultural  operations  in  large  fields.  The  most  trivial 
businesses  are  being  conpentrated  in  the  same  way — errands 
are  run  and  carpet  sacks  are  carried  by  corporations  "  (p.  232). 
The  concentration  of  people  in  cities  is  not  the  same  thing 
as  the  concentration  of  the  wealth  of  those  cities  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  individuals.  The  centralization  of  labour 
in  cities  has  assisted  the  birth  of  the  trade  union  and  the 
co-operative  society,   which  are  among  the  best  agencies   for 


46o  Contejnporary  Socialism. 

diffusing  wealth  ;  and  th.e  growth  of  joint-stock  companies 
is  a  strange  proof  of  a  tendency  to  greater  concentration  of 
wealth,  for  the  joint-stock  company  is  really  an  instrument 
of  the  small  capital,  enabling  it  by  combination  to  compete 
successfully  with  the  larger ;  and  as  to  agriculture,  the  real 
tendency,  in  this  country  at  any  rate,  seems  to  be  to  lesser 
holdings.  When  we  complain  of  the  inequaUties  of  our  time 
— and  I  am  far  from  desiring  to  underrate  their  extent  or 
to  palliate  their  mischievousness — we  are  apt  to  forget  how 
largely  the  real  and  natural  process  of  evolution  is  after  all 
one  of  distribution,  how  much  the  most  conspicuous  of  the 
inequalities  have  been  incidental  to  a  transition  period,  and 
due  to  causes  of  a  temporary  nature,  and  how  many  indications 
we  possess  that  they  are  not  unhkely  to  be  corrected  and 
moderated  in  the  future  course  of  social  development.  Some 
of  the  official  returns  made  in  connection  with  the  income  tax 
show  that  the  immense  increase  of  wealth  of  the  last  thirty 
years  has  been  far  from  being  reaped  by  any  single  class,  but 
has  been  shared  pretty  evenly  by  all  the  classes  included  in 
those  returns.  We  possess  detailed  accounts  of  the  number 
of  persons  paying  income  tax  in  each  grade  of  income  under 
Schedule  D,  from  the  year  1849,  and  if  we  compare  the  figures 
of  that  year  with  those  of  1879,  we  shall  obtain  a  fair  index 
to  the  movement  of  distribution  during  those  thirty  years. 
Schedule  D,  it  is  true,  includes  only  incomes  derived  from 
trades  and  professions,  but  these  incomes  may  fairly  enough 
be  taken  as  sufficiently  characteristic  to  afford  a  trustworthy 
indication  of  the  general  movement.  While  population  in- 
creased in  the  thirty  years  by  22  per  cent.,  the  number  of 
incomes  liable  to  income-tax  increased  by  161  per  cent.,  and 
of  these,  the  incomes  that  have  increased  in  much  the  largest 
proportion  are  precisely  those  middling  or  lower  middling 
incomes  which  I  have  before  shown  to  have  unfortunately 
declined  since  1688.  While  the  number  of  incomes  over 
£1,000  a  year  has  increased  by  165  per  cent.,  the  number  of 
incomes  between  £160  and  £400  a  year  has  increased  by 
256  per  cent.  Mr.  Goschen,  in  his  inaugural  address  as  Pre- 
sident of  the  Royal  Statistical  Society  in  December,  1887,  pro- 
duced later  evidence  showing  the  continuance,  and  even  growth 


The  Agrarian  Socialis7n  of  Henry  George.     461 

of  the  same  tendency.  He  showed  from  the  Income  Tax 
Returns  that,  in  spite  of  the  increase  of  population  between 
1877  and  1886,  the  number  of  incomes  over  £1,000  a  year  had 
decreased  by  2*40  per  cent.,  and  the  number  of  incomes  be- 
tween £500  and  £1,000  had  remained  the  same,  while  the 
number  of  incomes  between  £150  and  £500  had  increased  21'4: 
per  cent.  He  showed  from  the  statistics  of  certain  selected 
public  companies,  that  in  the  ten  years  from  1876  to  1886  the 
number  of  their  shareholders  had  increased  by  72  per  cent., 
while  the  average  capital  per  shareholder  had  decreased  from 
£443  to  £323.  He  drew  similar  conclusions  from  the  probate 
and  inhabited  house  duty  figures,  and  from  several  other 
sources.  (See  Journal  of  Stathitical  Society^  December,  1887.) 
These  figures  prove  that  the  tendency  of  things,  so  far  as 
it  concerns  the  classes  above  the  labourers,  is  not  to  further 
and  exclusive  concentration,  but  rather  towards  a  wider  and 
beneficial  diffusion ;  and  in  regard  to  the  labouring  classes,  it 
is  admitted  by  all — even  by  the  extremest  social  pessimists — 
that  the  upper  and  middle  strata  of  them  have  participated  in 
the  progress  of  wealth  equally  with  their  neighbours.  There 
remains  only  the  lowest  class  of  all,  and  their  emancipation  is 
the  serious  task  of  social  reform  in  the  immediate  future  ;  but 
that  class  is  even  now  not  increasing  in  the  ratio  of  popula- 
tion ;  its  misery  comes  from  many  causes,  most  of  them  moral 
and  physical  rather  than  economic ;  and  though  it  presents 
difficult  and  trying  problems,  there  is  no  reason  for  renoun- 
cing the  hope  which  alone  can  sustain  social  reformers  to 
success. 

n.  Mr.  George^s  Explanation. 

If  there  is  any  force  in  the  foregoing  observations,  it  is  plain 
that  there  is  no  such  problem  as  Mr.  George  has  undertaken  to 
explain,  and  we  are  therefore  exempted  from  all  necessity  of 
examining  his  explanation.  But  to  Mr.  George's  own  mind 
his  explanation  of  the  appearance  that  troubled  him  really  con- 
stitutes the  demonstration  of  it ;  at  any  rate,  he  offers  no  other. 
The  question  of  the  increase  of  poverty  is  of  course  a  question 
of  fact,  that  cannot  be  settled  by  a  priori  deduction  alone  ;  but 
Mr.  George  seems  to  think  otherwise.     He  is  too  bent  on  prov- 


462  Contemporary  Socialism. 

ing  it  to  be  necessary  to  think  of  asking  whether  it  is  actual^ 
and  even  a  man  of  science  like  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace,  while  re- 
gretting that  Mr.  George  had  not  chosen  to  build  his  proposals 
on  ground  of  fact,  declares  that  he  adopted  an  equally  legiti- 
mate method  in  deducing  his  results  "  from  the  admitted  prin- 
ciples and  data  of  political  economy."  ("  Land  Nationalization," 
p.  19.)  Moreover,  most  of  the  social  pessimism  of  the  present 
time  draws  its  chief  support,  exactly  like  Mr.  George's,  from  the 
supposed  bearing  of  certain  received  economic  doctrines ;  and 
our  task  would  therefore  be  incomplete  if  we  did  not  follow  Mr. 
George  on  this  "  high^mn  road  "  on  which  he  so  boldly  fares 
forth,  and  performs,  as  will  presently  be  seen,  many  a  remark- 
able feat. 

Before  beginning  his  explanation,  he  throws  the  problem 
itself  into  what  he  conceives  to  be  a  more  suitable  scientific 
form.  "  The  cause,"  says  he,  "  which  produces  poverty  in  the 
midst  of  advancing  wealth  is  evidently  the  cause  which  ex- 
hibits itself  in  the  tendency  everywhere  recognised  of  wages  to 
a  minimum.  Let  us  therefore  put  our  inquiry  into  this  compact 
form  :  Why,  in  spite  of  increase  in  productive  power,  do  wages 
tend  to  a  minimum  which  will  give  but  a  bare  living  ?  "  (p.  10). 
The  problem,  as  thus  restated,  is  clearly,  be  it  observed,  one 
of  quantity,  not  of  proportion.  A  bare  living  is  not  a  relative 
share,  but  a  definite  amount,  of  produce.  But  the  tendency  in 
wages  to  such  a  minimum,  which  he  asserts  to  be  everywhere 
recognised,  is  really  not  recognised  at  all.  In  alleging  that 
it  is  so,  Mr.  George  evidently  alludes  to  the  doctrine  of 'wages 
taught  by  Ricardo  and  his  school ;  but  what  they  recognised 
in  wages  was  a  tendency,  not  to  a  minimum  that  would  give  but 
a  bare  living,  but  to  a  minimum  that  would  give  a  customary 
living;  in  other  words,  that  would  sustain  the  labourers  in  the 
standard  of  comfort  customary  among  their  own  class.  The 
economic  minimum  is  not  the  absolute  minimum  of  a  bare 
living ;  it  is,  as  Mr.  George  himself  elsewhere  puts  it,  "  the 
lowest  amount  on  which  labourers  will  consent  to  live  and 
reproduce," — that  is,  not  the  lowest  amount  on  which  any 
individual  labourer  will  do  so,  but  the  lowest  amount  which 
labouring  people  in  general  consider  it  necessary  to  earn  before 
they  will  undertake  the  responsibility  of  marriage.     If  they 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     463 

were  to  get  less  than  this,  it  was  contended,  they  would  refrain 
from  manying  to  an  extent  that  would  tell  sufficiently  on  the 
supply  of  labour  to  force  wages  up  again  to  their  old  level. 
This  level  was  the  minimum  to  which  wages  constantly  tended, 
but  then  it  was  always  higher  than  a  bare  living  ;  it  was  deter- 
mined by  the  standard  of  requirements  current  among  the 
labouring  class  at  the  time  ;  and  it  was  recognised  to  be 
capable  of  rising  if  that  standard  rose.  True,  Eicardo  and  the 
economists  of  his  generation  entertained  very  poor  hopes  of  any 
such  rise,  because  the  working  classes  of  their  time,  being  with- 
out the  intelligence,  the  ideas  of  comfort,  the  higher  wants 
that  are  powerfully  operative  among  the  working  classes  of 
our  day,  were  generally  seen  to  "  take  out "  their  better  wages 
when  they  chanced  to  get  them  in  nothing  but  earlier  mar- 
riages, which  in  the  end  brought  their  wages  down  again.  We 
have  happily  now  to  do  with  a  more  aspiring  and  a  less  uni- 
formly composed  working  class.  It  is  perhaps  more  aspiring 
in  some  measure  because  it  is  less  uniformly  composed.  It 
contains  many  ranks  and  inequahties  and  standards  of  social 
refinement  and  comfort,  and  the  presence  of  these  side  by  side 
develops  a  more  active  tendency  upward,  which,  by  supplying 
a  stronger  check  than  before  on  improvident  marriages,  will 
enable  the  labourers,  class  after  class  of  them,  to  appropriate 
securely  more  and  more  of  the  common  domain  of  advancing 
civilization.  ^Ye  have  had  abundant  experience  of  a  rise  in 
the  standard  of  life,  and  a  rise  in  the  rate  of  wages,  both  re- 
maining as  permanent  possessions  of  sections  of  the  labouring 
class.  But  if  Ricardo  and  his  school  had  less  faith  than  they 
reasonably  might  have  had  in  the  possibility  of  a  permanent 
upward  tendency  in  wages,  they  certainly  never  dreamt  of 
believing  in  any  permanent  downward  tendency.  According 
to  their  doctrine  the  rate  of  wages  moved  up  and  down  within 
certain  limits,  but  always  tended  to  come  back  to  a  particular 
figure — the  amount  necessary  to  give  the  labourer  the  living 
customary  among  his  class.  This  figure  was  really  no  more  a 
minimum  than  it  was  a  maximum  ;  wages  were  supposed  to 
fall  sometimes  below  it,  as  they  were  supposed  to  rise  some- 
times above  it ;  and  to  speak  of  it  as  a  minimum  that  would 
give  but  a  bare  living  is  completely  to  misrepresent  its  nature. 


464  Contemporary  Socialism, 

The  assumption  from  which  Mr.  George  starts  is  thus  in  no 
wise  an  admitted  principle  of  pohtical  economy,  and  would 
therefore  not  answer  the  test  of  legitimacy  laid  down  by  Mr. 
Wallace.  It  has  no  ground  outside  of  Mr.  George's  own  imag- 
ination. Economists  would  solve  his  problem,  "  why  in  spite 
of  increased  productive  power  wages  tend  to  a  minimum  that 
will  give  but  a  bare  living  ?  "  by  simply  denying  his  fact,  and 
having  done  with  it.  But  Mr.  George  persuades  himself  that 
they  would  answer  it  otherwise,  and  devotes  the  next  section 
of  his  book  to  an  elaborate  confutation  of  the  false  answers  he 
supposes  they  would  return  to  it.  They  would  either  explain 
it,  he  thinks,  by  their  theory  of  the  wages  fund,  or  they  would 
explain  it  by  their  theory  of  population ;  and  so  before  con- 
fiding to  us  his  own  explanation,  he  considers  it  necessary  to 
stop  and  clear  these  two  venerable  theories  out  of  his  way.  I 
am  not  concerned  to  defend  these  theories ;  their  truth  would 
not  make  Mr.  George's  own  view  any  the  falser,  nor  their 
falsehood  make  it  any  the  truer.  One  of  them  indeed  was 
dead  and  buried  before  Mr.  George  attacked  it,  though  I  am 
bound  to  say  it  would  never  have  fallen  before  the  particular 
line  of  attack  he  directs  against  it.  The  wages  fund  doctrine, 
which  played  a  considerable  role  both  in  its  original  form  as 
taught  by  Senior,  and  in  its  subsequent  form  as  modified  by 
M'Culloch,  was  refuted  by  Mr.  Thornton  in  1869,  was  almost 
instantly  abandoned  by  the  candid  mind  of  Mr.  Mill,  and  is 
now  rarely  met  with  as  a  living  economic  doctrine.  The 
wages  fund  is  still  regarded  of  course  as  having  its  limit  in 
capital,  and  in  the  conditions  which  generate  capital,  but  since 
these  conditions  include  among  other  things  the  number  and 
efficiency  of  the  labourers,  the  amount  of  the  wages  fund  is  no 
longer  represented  as  at  any  given  moment  a  fixed  and  pre- 
determined quantity  susceptible  of  no  possible  alteration  to 
meet  the  exigencies  of  the  labour  market,  and  when  once  this 
characteristic  was  given  up,  the  wages  fund  doctrine  was  seen 
to  have  degenerated  into  little  more  than  a  stately  truism. 
The  Malthusian  theory  of  population  is  not  in  the  same  way 
discredited,  but  it  likewise  is  now  generally  stated  with  some 
reserve.  It  has  become  well  understood  that  the  earlier  econo- 
mists assigned  it  too  absolute  and  universal  a  validity,  and  that 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     465 

it  is  not,  as  they  thought,  a  law  for  all  ages,  and  especially  and 
happily  not  a  law  for  our  own.  It  is  true  of  an  era  of  progres- 
sive population  and  diminishing  return  from  agriculture,  but 
for  our  day  it  has  been  robbed  of  its  terrors  by  free  trade  and 
steam  navigation,  which  have  connected  our  markets  with 
continents  of  virgin  soil,  and  carried  us  virtually  into  an  era  of 
increasing  return  of  indefinite  duration.  The  population  ques- 
tion was  one  of  serious  practical  import  for  our  fathers,  and  as 
they  saw  people  marrying  and  giving  in  marriage,  while  every 
fresh  bushel  of  food  was  extracted  with  increasing  difficulty 
from  an  exhaustible  soil,  they  looked  with  a  reasonable  dread 
to  the  future,  and  saw  no  way  of  hope  except  in  the  practice 
of  a  heroic  continence.  But  we  live  in  another  time.  "We 
find  population  increasing  and  yet  bread  cheapening,  simply 
because  the  locomotive  which  alarmed  Mr.  George  by  taking 
the  tramp  to  California  has  brought  back  plenty  to  the  rest 
of  the  world.  It  is  due  to  the  material  progress  he  preaches 
against  that  we  are  the  first  generation  who  can  afford  to  make 
light  of  the  population  question,  and  leave  our  remote  posterity 
to  deal  with  the  peril  when  it  shall  actually  arrive. 

Mr.  George,  however,  is  not  content  with  disputing  these 
doctrines ;  he  insists  on  replacing  them  with  others  exactly 
opposite  to  them  in  purport,  and  for  which  he  claims  a  like 
universal  validity.  He  propounds  a  new  population  theory, 
and  a  new  wages  fund  theory  of  his  own.  The  more  popu- 
lation abounds,  the  more  will  subsistence  superabound,  is  his 
comfortable  counter-proposition  to  Malthusianism.  "  I  assert," 
says  he,  "  that  in  any  given  state  of  civilization  a  greater 
number  of  people  can  collectively  be  better  provided  for  than 
a  smaller.  ...  I  assert  that  the  new  mouths  which  an 
increasing  population  calls  into  existence,  require  no  more 
food  than  the  old  ones,  while  the  hands  they  bring  with  them 
can  in  the  natural  order  of  things  produce  more.  I  assert  that, 
other  things  being  equal,  the  greater  the  population,  the 
greater  the  comfort  which  an  equitable  distribution  of  wealth 
would  give  to  each  individual  "  (p.  99).  In  a  word,  his  teach- 
ing is  that  "  other  things  being  equal "  over-population  is  a 
ridiculous  impossibility.  What  may  be  all  concealed  under 
the  reservation,  "other  things  being  equal,"  he  does  not  en- 

H   H 


466  Contemporary  Socialism. 

lighten  us,  but  it  avowedly  contains  at  least  one  presupposition 
of  decisive  importance  to  the  question,  the  presupposition  of 
the  unlimited  productiveness  of  the  soil.  Mr.  George  denies 
the  law  of  diminishing  return.  We  shall  presently  find  him, 
in  his  doctrine  about  rent,  basing  his  whole  book  on  the  opera- 
tion of  this  law.  But  here  in  his  doctrine  about  population  it 
suits  him  to  deny  it,  and  he  does  so  on  singularly  fantastical 
grounds  (p.  93).  He  denies  it  on  the  ground  that  "  matter  is 
eternal,  and  force  must  for  ever  continue  to  act,"  as  if  the  in- 
destructibility of  matter  was  the  same  thing  as  its  infinite 
productiveness.  "  As  the  water  that  we  take  from  the  ocean 
must  again  return  to  the  ocean,  so  the  food  we  take  from  the 
reservoirs  of  nature  is,  from  the  moment  we  take  it,  on  its  way 
back  to  those  reservoirs.  What  we  draw  from  a  limited 
extent  of  land  may  temporarily  reduce  the  productiveness  of 
that  land,  because  the  return  may  be  to  other  land  or  may  be 
divided  between  that  land  and  other  land,  or  perhaps  all  land ; 
but  this  possibility  lessens  with  increasing  area,  and  ceases 
when  the  whole  globe  is  considered.  That  the  earth  could 
maintain  a  thousand  bUlions  of  people  as  easily  as  a  thousand 
millions  is  a  necessary  deduction  from  the  manifest  truths  that 
at  least,  as  far  as  our  agency  is  concerned,  matter  is  eternal 
and  force  must  for  ever  continue  to  act.  .  .  .  And  from 
this  it  follows  that  the  limit  to  the  population  of  the  globe  can 
only  be  the  limit  of  space.  Now  this  limitation  of  space — this 
danger  that  the  human  race  may  increase  beyond  the  possi- 
bility of  finding  elbow-room — is  so  far  off  as  to  have  for  us  no 
more  practical  interest  than  the  recurrence  of  the  glacial  period 
or  the  final  extinguishment  of  the  sun  "  (p.  94-5).  If  this  pas- 
sage means  anything,  it  means  that  the  race  may  go  on  multi- 
plying as  long  as  it  finds  room  to  stand  on,  and  that  even  when 
that  limit  is  reached  it  can  only  be  squeezed  to  death  and  not 
starved.  It  can  in  no  case  apparently  be  starved.  Subsistence 
cannot  possibly  run  short,  for  the  inherent  powers  of  the  soil 
are  not  permanently  destructible.  But  he  might  as  well  argue 
that  man  must  be  omnipotent  because  he  is  immortal.  The 
question  is  not  one  of  the  durability  of  the  productive  powers 
of  the  earth — it  is  one  of  their  limited  or  unlimited  productive 
capacity.     Up  to  a  certain  point  they  may  yield  the   same 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     467 

return  at  tlie  same  cost  year  after  year  in  scecida  scectilorum, 
but  will  they  yield  more?  Manifestly  not.  Every  bushel 
they  give  after  that  is  got  at  continuously  increasing  cost. 
Now  of  course  wherever  population  increases  so  much,  com- 
pared with  the  land  at  its  disposal,  that  this  increasing  cost 
must  be  incurred  in  order  to  find  them  food,  the  epoch  of 
diminishing  return  in  agriculture  has  arrived,  and  the  peril  of 
over-population  is  already  present.  Happily,  as  we  have  said, 
that  time  is  not  yet,  but  it  will  come  long,  long  before  the 
human  race  fails  to  find  elbow-room  in  this  planet. 

Mr.  George  himself  admits  that  in  a  country  of  inconsider- 
able extent,  or  in  a  small  island,  such  as  Pitcairn's  Island, 
over-population  is  quite  possible  before  elbow-room  is  near 
exhausted — (p.  74) — and  in  making  the  admission  he  virtually 
surrenders  his  case.  He  admits  in  detail  what  he  denies  in 
gross.  For  is  not  the  soil  of  a  small  island  or  an  inconsiderable 
country  as  eternal  as  the  soil  of  a  continent  ?  The  only  dif- 
ference is  that  it  is  not  so  extensive,  and  therefore  comes  to 
the  epoch  of  diminishing  return  sooner.  That  is  all.  The 
reason  whj^  he  makes  an  exception  of  such  an  island  is  because 
its  inhabitants  "  are  cut  off  from  communication  with  the  rest 
of  the  world,  and  consequently  from  the  exchanges  which  are 
necessary  to  the  improved  modes  of  production  resorted  to 
as  population  becomes  dense  "  (p.  74).  But  if  density  of  popu- 
lation is  such  a  sure  improver  of  production  as  Mr.  George 
represents  it  to  be  elsewhere,  why  should  it  fail  here  ?  And 
if  it  fail  anywhere,  how  can  he  argue  that  it  must  succeed 
everywhere  ?  Once  he  admits,  as  he  does  in  this  passage, 
that  subsistence  has  a  definite  limit  in  the  modes  of  production 
that  happen  to  be  known  in  any  age  and  country,  and  that 
population  has  a  definite  limit  for  such  age  and  country  in 
the  amount  of  subsistence  which  the  known  modes  of  pro- 
duction are  capable  of  extracting  from  the  soil,  he  really 
admits  all  that  Malthusians  generally  contend  for,  and  coming 
to  curse,  he  has  really  blessed  them  altogether.  The  limit  of 
subsistence  which  he  here  recognises — the  limit  imposed  bj^ 
the  state  of  the  arts — is  far  within  the  limit  which  he  has 
just  been  denying,  the  natural  limit  to  the  inherent  fertility 
of  the  soil,  on  which  economists  base  their  law  of  diminishing 


468  Contemporary  Socialism. 

return.  The  former  point  is  far  sooner  reached  than  the 
latter.  Men  will  starve  because  they  don't  know  how  to 
make  the  best  use  of  nature  long  before  they  will  starve  be- 
cause nature  is  used  up  ;  and  it  is  exactly  that  earlier  limit 
on  which  Malthusians  lay  stress. 

But  except  for  this  inconsistent  admission  in  the  case  of  a 
petty  isolated  island,  Mr.  George  persistently  refuses  to  recog- 
nise any  kind  of  Umit  to  subsistence,  either  in  the  productive 
capacity  of  the  soil  or  in  the  state  of  the  arts.  He  seems  to 
fancy  that  land  will  go  on  yielding  larger  and  larger  harvests 
ad  infinitum  to  accommodate  an  increasing  population,  and 
that  even  if  it  failed  to  do  so,  new  inventions  or  improved 
processes  of  production  would  be  constantly  discovered  when 
they  were  needed,  and  keep  the  supply  of  food  always  equal 
to  the  demand.  With  these  crude  assumptions  in  his  head, 
he  arrives  very  easily  at  his  own  peculiar  theory,  which  is, 
that  subsistence  tends  to  increase  faster  than  population,  be- 
cause the  growth  of  population  itself  affords  the  means  of  such 
economies  and  organization  of  labour  as  multiply  immensely 
the  productive  capacity  of  each  individual  labourer.  A  hundred 
labourers,  he  is  fond  of  arguing,  will  produce  much  more  than 
a  hundred  times  the  amount  that  one  will,  and  it  is  therefore 
clear  folly  to  think  of  population  as  capable  of  encroaching  on 
subsistence.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  almost  fitter  to  speak 
of  it  as  a  means  of  positively  economizing  subsistence.  Mr. 
George's  mistake  arises  from  ignoring  the  fact  that  subsistence 
depends  on  the  productive  capacity  of  land  as  well  as  on  the 
productive  capacity  of  labour,  and  the  productive  capacity  of 
land  is  not  indefinitely  progressive. 

Mr.  George's  new  wages  fund  theory  is  based  on  a  precisely 
analogous  misconception  of  the  real  conditions  of  the  case,  and 
is  just  as  much  in  the  air  as  his  population  theory.  "  Wages," 
he  says,  "  cannot  be  diminished  by  the  increase  of  labourers, 
but  on  the  contrary,  as  the  efficiency  of  labour  manifestly 
increases  with  the  number  of  labourers,  the  more  labourers, 
other  things  being  equal,  the  higher  wages  should  be  "  (p.  62). 
Just  as  he  has  already  argued  that  food  can  never  run  short 
before  an  advancing  population,  because  the  new  hands  can 
produce  much  more  than  the  new  mouths  can  consume,  as  if 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     469 

the  hands  span  it  out  of  their  own  finger  nails ;  so  he  now 
argues  that  wages  can  never  decUne  for  want  of  capital  to 
employ  labourers,  because  the  capital  that  employs  them  is 
made  by  the  labourers  themselves.  They  are  paid,  he  declares, 
not  out  of  the  capital  of  their  employers,  but  out  of  the  pro- 
duct of  their  ©wn  labour.  Mr.  F.  A.  Walker,  the  eminent 
American  economist,  had  already  taught  a  similar  doctrine, 
but  with  the  reserv^ation  that  while  wages  were  really  paid  out 
of  the  produce  of  the  labour  they  remunerated,  they  were 
usually  advanced  out  of  the  employer's  capital.  But  Mr. 
George  throws  aside  this  reservation,  and  declares  boldly  that 
wages  are  neither  paid  nor  advanced  out  of  capital,  and  that 
if  any  advance  is  made  in  the  transaction  at  all,  it  is  the 
labourer  who  makes  it  to  the  employer,  not  the  employer  to 
the  labourer.  "  In  performing  his  labour,  he  (the  labourer)  is 
advancing  in  exchange  ;  when  he  gets  his  wages,  the  exchange 
is  completed.  During  the  time  he  is  earning  the  wages,  he 
is  advancing  capital  to  his  employer ;  but  at  no  time,  unless 
wages  are  paid  before  work  is  done,  is  the  employer  advancing 
capital  to  him  "  (p.  49). 

In  this  contention  Mr.  George  relies  much  on  the  analogy 
of  the  "  self-employing  "  labour  of  primitive  society.  When 
men  live  by  gathering  eggs,  he  tells  us,  the  eggs  they  gather 
are  their  wages.  No  doubt ;  but  in  our  complicated  civiliza- 
tion we  don't  live  by  gathering  eggs  from  day  to  day,  but 
by  sowing  the  seed  in  spring  which  is  to  yield  us  food  only 
in  harvest — by  preparing  work  for  the  market  which  may 
take  weeks,  months,  even  years  before  it  is  marketable.  The 
energetic  Sir  John  Sinclair  is  said  to  have  once  danced  at  a 
ball  in  the  evening  dressed  in  a  suit  the  wool  of  which  was 
still  growing  on  the  sheep's  back  in  the  morning ;  but  rapidity 
like  that  is  naturally  foreign  to  ordinary  commerce.  The 
successive  operations  of  chpping,  fulling,  teasing,  spinning, 
dying,  weaving,  cutting,  sewing,  occupy  considerable  time. 
So  with  other  things.  Houses,  ships,  railways,  are  not  built 
in  a  day,  or  by  a  single  workman.  The  product  of  a  single 
workman's  work  for  a  day  at  any  of  these  things  has  no  value 
apart  from  the  product  of  the  other  workmen's  work,  nor  has 
the  work  of  them  all  any  value  unless  the  work  is,  or  is  to 


470  Contemporary  Socialism. 

be,  completed.  The  wages  paid  during  the  period  of  con- 
struction, therefore,  cannot  possibly  have  come  out  of  the  work 
for  which  they  were  paid,  but  must  have  been  advanced 
otherwise.  Who  advances  them?  Clearly  not  the  labourer 
himself,  for  he  receives  them.  And  yet  that  is  what  Mr. 
George  unhesitatingly  asserts,  and  his  argument  is  as  courage- 
ous as  it  is  ingenious.  He  does  not  shrink  from  applying  it 
to  the  extremest  case  you  like  to  suggest — the  Great  Eastern, 
the  Gothard  Tunnel,  the  Suez  Canal ;  even  in  these  cases  the 
labourers,  who  spent  months  and  years  in  doing  the  work, 
were  paid  out  of  the  wol-k  itself,  out  of  the  Great  Eastern, 
out  of  the  Gothard  Tunnel,  out  of  the  Suez  Canal.  "  For," 
says  Mr.  George,  "  a  work  that  is  incomplete  is  not  valueless, 
it  is  not  unexchangeable  ;  money  may  be  raised  on  it  by 
mortgage  or  otherwise,  and  as  this  money  is  raised  on  the 
product  of  the  labourer's  work,  the  wages  it  is  employed  to 
pay  are  really  paid  out  of  that  product."  But  this  only  shifts 
the  question  a  little :  it  does  not  answer  it.  Where  does  this 
lent  money  come  from?  Certainly  not  from  the  work  it  is 
lent  on.  Perhaps  not,  Mr.  George  will  rejoin,  again  shifting 
his  ground,  but  it  comes  from  the  product  of  the  contempor- 
aneous work  of  other  labourers.  "  It  is  not  necessary  to  the 
production  of  things  that  cannot  be  used  as  subsistence  or 
cannot  be  immediately  utilized  that  there  should  have  been  a 
previous  production  of  the  wealth  required  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  labourers  while  the  production  is  going  on. 
It  is  only  necessary  that  there  should  be,  somewhere  within 
the  circle  of  exchange,  a  contemporaneous  production  of  sub- 
sistence for  the  labourers,  and  a  willingness  to  exchange  this 
subsistence  for  the  thing  on  which  the  labour  is  being  be- 
stowed "  (p.  51).  But  this  is  only  passing  round  the  dilemma. 
For  this  contemporaneous  production  has  itself  the  same  diffi- 
culty to  face ;  it  has  to  sustain  its  labourers  during  the  time 
taken  to  complete  their  work ;  and  it  can  only  do  so,  according 
to  Mr.  George's  explanation,  by  raising  the  means  through  a 
mortgage  on  the  unfinished  work.  It  borrows  to  pay  its  own 
wages,  but  is  apparently  able  to  lend  to  pay  other  people's. 
Mr.  George  has  a  happy  method  of  carrying  on  the  affairs  of 
society  by  mutual  accommo-lation.      Peter  is  a  shoemaker  who 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  Geoige.     471 

wants  money  to  buy  leather  to  make  shoes  and  food  to  main- 
tain him  till  the  shoes  are  made.  Paul  is  a  carpenter  who  is 
in  a  like  case,  and  wants  money  to  buy  food  and  timber. 
Peter  borrows  the  money  he  needs  from  Paul  on  mortgage, 
and  then  Paul  in  turn  borrows  what  he  needs  from  Peter,  on 
the  same  terms.  Utopia  is  a  pleasanter  world  than  ours,  and 
an  lOU  probably  goes  a  long  way  in  it ;  but  here  on  this  hard 
earth  Peter  would  certainly  make  no  shoes  nor  Paul  any 
chairs,  unless  he  had  either  himself  saved  enough  to  purchase 
the  materials,  or  found  a  neighbour  who  had  done  so  and  was 
ready  to  make  him  an  advance.  Except  for  this  neighbour 
he  could  not  work  at  all,  and  could  not  therefore  "  create  any 
wages,"  and  the  amount  of  work  he  got  and  wages  he  earned 
would  manifestly  depend  greatly  on  the  amount  of  capital 
this  stranger  possessed  and  was  disposed  to  invest  in  such  an 
enterprise. 

It  is  true  that  the  wages  of  labour  will  be  guided  in  amount 
by  the  quantity  of  the  product,  but  they  are  not  on  that 
account  actually  paid  out  of  the  product.  And  it  is  true  that 
the  labourer  gives  value  for  his  wages — certainly  he  would  not 
otherwise  be  employed — but  that  value  is  not  usually  market- 
able until  some  time,  in  many  cases  years,  after  the  wages 
have  been  enjoyed,  and  therefore  cannot  have  been  the  source 
whence  these  wages  came.  The  wages  were  paid  out  of  the 
saved  results  of  previous  labour — that  is,  out  of  capital — and  Mr. 
George  has  absolutely  no  conception  of  the  amount  of  capital 
that  is  necessary  to  carry  on  the  work  of  industry.  He  says 
we  live  from  hand  to  mouth,  and  so  in  a  sense  we  do.  Our 
capital  is  being  constantly  consumed  and  constantly  repro- 
duced again,  and  economists  are  fond  of  showing,  from  the 
speedy  recovery  of  a  civilized  state  after  a  devastating  war, 
how  short  a  time  it  would  really  take  to  replace  it  entirely. 
But  until  it  is  replaced  every  inhabitant  undergoes  considerable 
privations,  which  simply  means  that  the  rate  of  wages  has 
fallen  for  want  of  it.  There  are  some  trades,  like  the  baker's, 
where  the  product  is  actually  sold  before  the  wages  are  paid ; 
and  there  are  many,  like  the  whaler's  mentioned  by  Mr. 
George,  where  the  labourers  can  afford  to  wait  long  terms  for 
part  at  least  of  their  remuneration  (no  great  sign,  by  the  way, 


472  Contemporary   Socialism. 

of  the  minimum  of  a  bare  living) ;  but  even  in  tbese  much 
capital  must  be  set  aside  before  a  single  hand  is  engaged. 
The  whalers,  for  example,  must  be  furnished  with  a  ship  to 
start  with,  and  be  provisioned  for  the  voyage ;  and  if  these 
requisites  are  not  forthcoming,  they  must  go  without  work  and 
wages  altogether,  or  take  work  at  inferior  terms  in  a  market 
glutted  by  their  own  arrival  in  it.  Mr.  George  speaks  hghtly 
of  the  labourers  who  excavated  the  Suez  Canal  advancing 
value  to  the  company  who  employed  them,  and  yet  before  a 
single  pick  or  spade  was  stuck  into  the  sand  of  the  Isthmus 
the  company  had  laid  out,  in  preliminary  expenses  and 
machinery,  as  much  as  six  millions  sterling — more  than  a  third 
of  the  whole  cost  of  the  Canal.  They  had  then  to  pay  other 
five  or  six  millions  in  wages  before  the  work  fetched  a  single 
fee ;  and  yet  Mr,  George  will  have  us  believe  that  those  five 
or  six  millions  actually  came  out  of  the  profits,  merely  because 
the  projectors  hoped  and  believed  they  might  eventually  come 
out  of  them.  Labourers  give  an  equivalent  to  the  capitalists 
for  their  wages,  but  their  wages  are  really  paid  out  of  the 
capital  which  their  employers  have  saved  for  the  purpose  of 
purchasing  that  equivalent.  I  may  have  bought  a  cow  in  the 
hope  of  recouping  myself  by  selling  her  milk,  but  I  did  not 
therefore  pay  her  price  out  of  the  milk  money — for  nobody 
would  have  sold  her  to  me  if  he  had  to  wait  for  that ;  I 
bought  her  out  of  money  I  had  previously  saved,  and  from 
the  same  source  exactly,  and  no  other,  do  capitalists  buy 
labour. 

But,  objects  Mr.  George,  that  cannot  be ;  wages  cannot  be 
paid  out  of  capital,  because  they  are  often  lowest  when,  as 
shown  by  the  low  rate  of  interest,  capital  is  most  abundant. 
But  Mr.  George  here  confounds  existent  capital  with  emploj^ed 
capital.  It  is  only  the  capital  actually  employed  that  tells  on 
wages ;  the  low  rate  of  interest  merely  shows  that  there  has 
been  an  increase  in  unemployed  capital,  and  since  that  is  gene- 
rally a  correlative  of  a  diminution  of  emploj'ed  capital,  it  is 
but  natural  that  low  interest  should  be  attended  by  low  wages. 
Low  wages  are  a  consequence  of  \inemployed  labour,  unem- 
ployed labour  a  consequence  of  unemployed  capital,  and  un- 
employed capital    a  consequence   of   unfavourable   industrial 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     473 

conditions  which  labour,  either   with   capital  or  without  it, 
cannot  evade  or  reverse. 

So  far  then  of  Mr.  George's  views  on  population  and  the 
wages  fund,  for  which  much  value,  as  well  as  originality,  has 
been  claimed.  The  chapters  in  which  he  states  them  are 
certainly  among  the  most  impressive  and  characteristic  in  his 
book.  Nowhere  else  does  he  display  more  strikingly  his  re- 
markable acuteness,  fertility,  and  literary  power,  and  nowhere 
else  are  these  high  qualities  emplo^-ed  more  fruitlessly  from 
sheer  want  of  grasp  of  the  elements  of  the  problems  he  dis- 
cusses. These  chapters  are  after  all,  however,  something  of  a 
digression  from  the  main  business  of  the  book,  and  they  have 
perhaps  detained  us  too  long  from  Mr.  George's  own  explana- 
tion of  the  supposed  growth  of  poverty. 

His  explanation  is  this :  "  The  reason  why,  in  spite  of  the 
increase  of  productive  power,  wages  constantly  tend  to  a  mini- 
mum which  will  give  but  a  bare  living  is  that  with  increase  in 
productive  power,  rent  tends  to  even  greater  increase  "  (p.  199). 
"  Rent  swallows  up  the  whole  gain,  and  pauperism  accompanies 
progress  "  (p.  158).  "  The  magic  of  property,"  it  seems,  has 
an  unsuspected  maUgnancy ;  but,  in  the  present  case,  its  spell 
is  really  exercised  only  over  Mr.  George's  own  vision.  For 
who,  with  his  eyes  open,  would  believe  for  a  moment  what  Mr. 
George  so  gravely  asserts,  that  of  the  whole  gain  won  by  our 
multiplied  productive  power,  none  whatever  has  gone  to  the 
great  bankers,  and  brewers,  and  cotton  spinners,  and  iron- 
masters, and  corn  factors,  and  shipbuilders,  and  stockbrokers, 
and  railway  contractors  ;  that  our  Rothschilds,  and  Brassej^s, 
and  Barings,  and  Bairds,  the  great  plutocrats  of  the  time,  the 
possessors  of  the  largest  fortunes  in  the  country,  the  very  men 
and  classes  who  have  been  most  conspicuously  enriched  through 
the  material  progress  of  the  nation,  have  all  the  while  been 
conducting  a  hard  struggle  against  a  fatal  tendenc}^  in  their 
incomes  to  sink  to  a  bare  living,  and  had  to  feed,  exactly  like 
the  manual  labourers,  from  the  crumbs  that  fall  from  the  land- 
owners' table.  The  assertion  is  too  violent  and  preposterous  to 
merit  serious  refutation.  Everybody  knows  that  the  greatest 
part  of  the  wealth  of  modern  society  is  not  concentrated  in  the 


474  Contemporary  Socialism. 

hands  of  the  landlords  at  all,  that  it  has  not  accrued  from  rent, 
and  that  it  would  not  be  a  farthing  the  less  though  private 
property  in  land  were  abolished  to-morrow. 

But  violent  and  preposterous  as  Mr.  George's  conclusion  is, 
it  has  not  been  arrived  at  without  the  exercise  of  much  per- 
verse ingenuity.  Having  been  brought  by  his  examination  of 
the  wages  fund  and  population  theories  to  the  conviction  that 
the  key  to  his  riddle  was  not  to  be  discovered  in  the  condi- 
tions that  regulated  production,  he  concludes  that  it  must, 
therefore,  be  sought  in  the  conditions  that  regulate  distribution. 
His  problem  is  thus  one  in  the  distribution  of  wealth,  and  it 
must  be  explained,  if  it  is  to  be  explained  at  all,  by  the  laws 
of  distribution.  To  investigate  these  laws,  therefore,  becomes 
now  his  object,  and  the  first  step  he  takes  is  a  truly  amazing 
one.  At  the  very  outset  he  throws  the  most  important  class 
of  participators  in  the  distribution — the  class  that  appropriates 
the  largest  share — out  of  court  altogether,  and  he  proceeds  to 
settle  the  whole  question  as  if  they  never  got  a  penny,  and  as  if 
the  entire  spoil  were  divided  among  their  neighbours.  People 
who  live  on  profits,  it  seems,  have  no  locus  standi  in  a  question 
of  distribution,  and  the  case  mu::t  be  considered  as  if  the  parties 
exclusively  concerned  were  the  people  who  live  on  wages,  the 
people  who  live  on  interest,  and  the  people  who  live  on  rent. 
"  With  profits,"  he  says,  "  this  inquiry  has  manifestly  nothing 
to  do.  We  want  to  find  what  it  is  that  determines  the  division 
of  their  joint  produce  between  land,  labour,  and  capital,  and 
profits  is  not  a  term  that  refers  exclusively  to  any  one  of  these 
three  divisions.  Of  the  three  parts  into  which  profits  are 
divided  by  political  economists,  namely  compensation  for  risk, 
wages  of  superintendence,  and  returns  for  the  use  of  capital, 
the  latter  falls  under  the  term  interest,  which  includes  all  the 
returns  for  the  use  of  capital  and  excludes  everything  else ; 
wages  of  superintendence  falls  under  the  term  wages,  which 
includes  all  returns  for  human  exertions  and  excludes  every- 
thing else ;  and  compensation  for  risk  has  no  place  whatever, 
as  risk  is  eliminated  when  all  the  transactions  of  a  community 
are  taken  together"  (pp.  113-4). 

Now  we  have  to  do  liere  with  no  mere  dilfference  of  termin- 
ology.    Profits  may  be  employers'  wages,  if  you  like  to  call 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     475 

them  so ;  but  it  is  a  fatal  confusion  to  suppose  that,  because 
you  have  called  them  employers'  wages,  you  are  therefore 
entitled  to  treat  them  as  if  they  were  governed  by  the  same 
laws  and  conditions  as  labourers'  wages.  The  truth  is  that 
they  are  governed  by  opposite  conditions,  and  that  the  pith  of 
the  labour  question  is  just  the  conflict  between  these  two  kinds 
of  wages  for  the  better  share  in  the  distribution.  The  battle  of 
labour  is  not  against  the  employer  receiving  fair  interest  on  his 
capital  in  proportion  to  its  quantity,  but  against  the  amount  of 
additional  profit  which  the  employer  claims  as  wages  of  super- 
intendence, and  which  he  also  rates  in  proportion  to  capital 
invested  instead  of  rating  it  in  proportion  to  his  own  trouble  or 
efficiency.  One  of  the  chief  hopes  of  the  workman  resides  in 
the  possibility  of  breaking  down  this  erroneous  criterion  of  fair 
remuneration  for  superintendence,  and  so  getting  the  employers 
to  content  themselves  with  smaller  profits  than  they  have  been 
in  the  habit  of  considering  indispensable.  Profits  and  wages 
have  thus  opposite  and  conflicting  interests  in  the  distribution, 
but  Mr.  George,  having  once  disguised  the  one  in  the  garb  of 
the  other,  is  imposed  on  by  the  disguise  himself,  and  treats 
them  in  his  subsequent  speculations  as  if  they  were  the  same 
thing,  or  at  any  rate — what  in  the  present  connection  is  equally 
pernicious  in  its  effects — as  if  their  respective  shares  in  the 
distribution  were  determined  by  precisely  the  same  conditions. 
The  result  is,  as  might  be  expected,  a  series  of  singular 
contretemps  springing  from  mistaken  identity,  like  those  we 
are  familiar  with  on  the  comic  stage.  The  manufacturing 
millionaire  appears  before  us  as  the  victim  of  the  same  harsh 
destiny  as  the  penniless  crossing-sweeper,  and  the  banker  of 
Lombard  Street  is  overshadowed  by  the  same  blighting  poverty 
as  the  lumper  of  Wapping.  Proudhon,  in  a  powerful  passage, 
describes  pauperism  as  invading  modern  society  at  both  ex- 
tremes ;  it  invaded  the  poor  in  the  positive  form  of  natural 
hunger ;  it  invaded  the  rich  in  the  unnatural  but  more  devour- 
ing lorm  of  insatiable  voracity.  The  burden  of  Mr.  George's 
prophetic  vision  contains  no  such  refinements.  He  sees  a  huge 
wedge  driven  through  the  middle  of  society  ;  and  on  the  under- 
side of  that  enchanted  wedge  he  sees  the  merchant  princes  of 
the  world  eating  the  bread  of  poverty  with  their  lowest  depend- 


4/6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

ents.  Mr.  George's  classification  of  profits  under  wages  tliere- 
fore  involves  much  more  than  a  mere  change  of  nomenclature, 
for  it  has  led  him  to  pass  oflf  this  absurd  vision  as  a  literal 
description  of  things  as  they  are.  By  that  classification  he 
has  really  put  out  of  his  own  sight  the  most  important  factor 
in  the  settlement  of  the  question  he  is  discussing,  and  so  he 
be::;ins  playing  Hamlet  by  leaving  the  part  of  Hamlet  out. 

Having  simplified  matters  by  throwing  profits  out  of  the 
cast,  Mr.  George's  next  step  is  to  assign  the  leading  role  to 
rent.  In  the  whole  drama  of  the  modern  distribution  of  wealth, 
no  part  is  more  striking  or  more  often  misunderstood  than  the 
part  played  by  rent.  Wages  never  cease  to  cost  much  and  to 
be  worth  little,  but  rent  seems  to  have  the  property  of  going 
on  growing  while  the  landlords  themselves  sleep  or  play.  This 
fact  has  impressed  Mr.  George  so  profoundly  that,  losing  sight 
of  things  in  their  true  connection  and  proportions,  he  declares 
that  the  growth  of  rent  is  the  key  to  the  whole  situation,  and 
that  neither  wages  nor  any  other  kind  of  income,  not  derived 
from  land,  can  ever  draw  any  advantage  from  the  increase  of 
prosperity,  because  rent  always  steps  in  before  them  and  runs  off 
wdth  the  spoil.  He  professes  to  found  this  conclusion  on  Ricardo's 
theory  of  rent,  which  he  accepts,  not  only  as  being  absolutely 
true,  but  as  being  too  self-evident  to  need  discussion.  Indeed,  he 
seems  disposed,  like  some  others,  to  have  his  fling  at  Mill  for 
calling  it  thejjo7Z5  asinorum,  of  political  economy ;  but  we  shall 
presently  discover  various  grounds  for  suspecting  that  he  has 
not  crossed  the  bridge  successfully  himself,  and  that  here,  as 
elsewhere,  he  has  been  led  seriously  astray  by  looking  at  things 
through  the  mist  of  doctrines  he  has  only  imperfectly  mastered. 
Anyhow,  he  offers  his  theory  as  a  deduction  from  Ricardo's 
law  of  rent,  and  this  deduction  claims  particular  attention  be- 
cause it  is  the  corner-stone  of  his  speculations,  and  constitutes 
what  he  would  consider  his  most  original  and  important  con- 
tribution to  economic  science.  He  says  that  the  law  of  rent 
itself  "  has  ever  since  the  time  of  Ricardo  .  .  .  been  clearly 
apprehended  and  fully  recognised.  But  not  so  its  corollaries. 
Plain  as  they  are,  the  accepted  doctrine  cf  wages  .  .  .  has 
hitherlo  prevented  their  recognition.  Yet,  is  it  not  as  plain  as 
the  simplest  geometrical  demonstrafon  that  the  corollary  of 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     477 

the  law  of  rent  is  the  law  of  wages,  when  the  division  of  the 
produce  is  simply  between  rent  and  wages;  or  the  law  of 
wages  and  interest  together,  when  the  division  is  into  rent, 
wages,  and  interest "  (p.  120).  It  is  really  plainer.  It  is  a 
mere  traism.  In  any  simple  division,  if  yon  know  how  much 
one  of  the  factors  gets,  you  know  how  much  is  left  for  the 
others,  and  if  you  like  to  dignify  your  conclusion  by  the  name 
of  corollary,  you  are  free  to  do  so.  But  the  real  point  is  this, 
whether  the  share  obtained  by  rent  is  fixed  irrespectively  of 
the  share  obtained  by  wages  and  interest,  or  whether,  on  the 
contrary,  it  does  not  presuppose  the  previous  determination  of 
the  latter.  There  is  no  doubt,  at  any  rate,  as  to  how  Ricardo 
— Mr.  George's  own  authority — regarded  the  matter.  Accord- 
ing to  his  celebrated  theory,  wages  and  interest  are  satisfied 
first,  and  then  rent  is  just  what  is  over.  Rent  is  simply  surplus 
profit.  In  hiring  land,  the  farmer  hires  a  productive  machine, 
and  under  the  influence  of  competition  gives,  for  the  use  of 
that  productive  machine  for  a  year,  the  whole  amount  of 
its  annual  produce  which  remains  as  a  surplus  after  paying 
the  wages  of  his  labourers,  and  allowing  interest  on  his  capital, 
and  what  he  considers  a  fair  profit  for  nis  own  work  of  super- 
intendence. A  certain  current  rate  of  wages  and  a  certain 
current  rate  of  profit  are  presupposed,  and  after  these  demands 
are  met,  then  if  the  land  has  yielded  anything  more,  that  sur- 
plus is  what  is  paid  as  rent.  Ricardo  always  presumes  that 
land  that  cannot  produce  enough  to  meet  these  demands  will 
not  be  cultivated  at  all,  and  that  the  poorest  land  actually 
under  cultivation  is  land  that  meets  them  and  does  no  more ; 
in  other  words,  that  leaves  nothing  over  for  rent.  Let  us  take 
Ricardo's  law  as  it  is  stated  by  Mr.  George  himself  (p.  118) : 
"  The  rent  of  land  is  determined  by  the  excess  of  its  produce 
over  that  which  the  same  application  can  secure  from  the  least 
productive  land  in  use."  The  standard  by  which,  according 
to  this  law,  the  amount  of  rent  is  supposed  to  be  determined, 
is  the  produce  of  the  least  productive  land  in  use.  Now,  what 
is  the  least  productive  land  in  use?  It  is  land  that  produces 
just  enough  to  pay  the  wages  the  labourers  upon  it  are  content 
to  work  for,  and  the  profits  the  farmer  of  it  is  content  to  farm 
for.      How  that  rate  of  wages  and  that  rate  of  profits  are  fixed 


478  Contemporary  Socialism. 

is  no  matter  here  ;  but  one  thing  is  clear — and  it  is  enougli  for 
our  present  purpose — that  they  cannot  be  determined,  as  Mr. 
George  represents  them  as  being,  by  a  law  of  rent  which  pre- 
sumes and  is  conditioned  by  their  operation.  Ricardo's  law 
virtually  explains  rent  in  terms  of  wages  and  profits,  and  it 
would  therefore  be  the  height  of  absurdity  to  re-explain  wages 
and  profits  m  terms  of  rent.  And  if  that  is  so,  the  circumstance 
which  excites  Mr.  George's  surprise,  that  economists  have 
always  so  clearly  apprehended  the  law  of  rent  itself,  and  yet 
failed  so  completely  to  recognise  the  corollaries  which  he 
plumes  himself  on  being  the  first  to  deduce  from  it,  admits  of 
a  very  simple  explanation :  the  economists  understood  the  law 
they  expounded,  and  were  better  reasoners  than  to  employ  it 
as  a  demonstration  of  its  own  postulates. 

This  will  become  still  plainer,  if  we  look  more  closely  at  the 
fact  which  has  struck  Mr.  George  so  much — the  constant  rise 
of  rent  in  modern  society.  He  attributes  that  rise  to  many 
causes ;  in  fact,  there  are  few  things  that  will  not,  in  his  opinion, 
raise  rent.  Progress  of  population  will  do  so  ;  but  if  population 
is  stationary,  it  will  be  done  all  the  same  by  progress  in  the 
arts ;  the  spread  of  education  will  do  it ;  retrenchment  of  public 
expenditure  will  do  it;  extending  the  margin  of  cultivation 
will  do  it ;  and  so  will  artificial  contraction  of  that  margin  by 
speculation.  In  short,  he  is  so  haunted  by  the  idea,  that  he 
seems  to  believe  that  so  long  as  rent  is  suffered  to  survive  at 
all,  whatever  we  do  will  only  conduce  to  its  increase.  Every 
step  of  progress  we  take  extends  its  evil  reign,  and  if  progress 
were  to  reach  perfection,  rent  would  drive  wages  and  interest 
completely  off  the  field  and  appropriate  "  the  whole  produce  " 
(p.  179).  These  fears  are  not  sober,  but  they  could  never  have 
risen  had  Mr.  George  first  mastered  the  theory  of  rent  he  founds 
them  on.  For  rent,  being  the  price  paid  by  producers  for  the 
use  of  a  productive  machine,  cannot  rise  unless  the  price  of  the 
product  rises  first  (or  its  quantity,  if  so  be  that  it  does  not 
increase  so  much  as  to  reduce  its  price),  for  unless  the  price 
of  agricultural  produce  rises,  the  farmer  cannot  afford  to  pay 
a  higher  rent  for  the  land  than  he  paid  before.  No  part  of 
Ricardo's  theory  is  more  elementary  or  more  unchallenged  than 
this,  that  the  rent  of  land  constitutes  no  part  of  the  price  of 


The  Agrarian  Sociaiism  of  Henry  George.     479 

bread,  and  that  high,  rent  is  not  the  cause  of  dear  bread,  but 
dear  bread  the  cause  of  high  rent.  Rent  cannot  rise  further 
or  faster  than  the  price  of  bread  (or  meat,  of  course)  will  allow 
it,  and  the  price  of  bread  is  beyond  the  landowner's  control.  ' 
He  cannot  raise  it,  but  once  it  rises,  he  can  easily  raise  rent  in 
a  corresponding  degree.  If  a  rise  of  rent  depends  on  a  rise  in 
the  price  of  bread,  what  does  a  rise  in  the  price  of  bread  depend 
on?  On  two  things  which  Mr.  George  ignores  or  misunder- 
stands— the  progress  of  population  and  the  diminishing  return 
in  agricultural  production.  The  growth  of  population  increases 
the  demand  for  food  so  much  as  to  raise  its  price,  and  renders 
it  profitable  to  resort  to  more  difficult  soils  or  more  expensive 
methods  for  additional  supplies.  The  price  will  then  remain 
at  the  figure  fixed  by  the  cost  of  the  costliest  portion  that  is 
brought  to  market. 

Now  Mr.  George  laughs  at  the  idea  of  increase  of  population 
causing  any  difficulty  about  the  supply  of  food — population, 
which  he  is  never  tired  of  telling  us,  is  the  very  thing  most 
wanted  to  multiply  that  supply,  and  possesses  a  power  of 
multiplying  it  in  even  a  progressive  ratio  to  its  numbers. 
"  The  labour  of  100  men,"  he  says,  "  other  things  being  equal, 
will  produce  much  more  than  one  hundred  times  as  much  as 
the  labour  of  one  man  "  (p.  163).  And  he  laughs  in  the  same 
way  at  the  idea  of  a  diminishing  return  in  agriculture,  as  if, 
says  he,  matter  were  not  eternal,  and  as  if  an  increasing  popu- 
lation did  not  of  itself  increase  the  productive  capacity  of  the 
land  through  increasing  the  productive  capacity  of  the  labour 
upon  it.  These  two  misunderstandings  lie  at  the  bottom  of  all 
Mr.  George's  vagaries  about  rent,  and  they  are  perhaps  natural 
to  a  speculator,  resident  in  a  rich  new  colon}',  which,  as  he 
describes  it  himself,  "  with  greater  natural  resources  than 
France,  has  not  yet  a  million  people."  No  doubt  in  a  country 
at  that  particular  stage  of  its  historical  development,  increase 
of  population  may  involve  an  increase,  and  even  a  more  than 
proportional  increase,  of  food  as  well  as  of  other  commodities ; 
but  that  particular  stage  is  a  temporary  and  fleeting  one, 
and  the  world  in  general  is  very  differently  situated  from  the 
State  of  California  thirty*  years  ago.  Where  there  is  plenty  of 
good  land,  the  increase  of  populatioii  occasions  no  increase  in 


480  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  cost  of  producing  food,  because  there  is  no  need  to  resort 
to  poorer  land  for  the  purpose  ;  and  while  food  is  got  as  cheaply 
as  before,  other  things  are  got  much  more  easily  and  abun- 
dantly in  consequence  of  the  economies  of  labour  and  the  many 
mutual  services  which  result  from  the  increased  numbers  of 
the  community.  But  that  state  of  matters  only  continues  so 
long  as  there  remains  no  occasion  to  resort  to  poorer  soils  for 
the  production  of  food,  and  that  time  is  long  past  in  most 
countries  of  the  world.  Mr.  George  no  doubt  contends  that  in 
all  countries  it  is  just  the  same  as  in  California,  because  even 
though  it  may  have  become  more  difficult  in  some  places  to 
produce  food,  it  has  become  everywhere  much  easier  to  produce 
other  commodities,  and  (so  he  argues)  the  production  of  any 
kind  of  commodity  is  practically  equivalent  to  the  production 
of  food,  for  it  can  always  be  exchanged  for  food.  So  it  can,  if 
food  is  there  to  exchange  for  it ;  but  the  very  question  is 
whether  food  is  there,  or  is  there  in  the  same  relative  quantity. 
If  I  say  it  is  more  difficult  to  get  food,  it  is  no  answer  to  tell 
me  that  is  is  much  easier  to  get  other  things.  And  because 
other  things  may  be  multiplied  indefinitely  at  the  same  cost, 
that  is  no  reason  for  denying  that  food  can  only  be  multiplied 
indefinitely  at  increasing  cost.  Yet  Mr.  George  reasons  as  if 
it  were.  This  confusion  is  repeated  again  and  again  in  the 
course  of  his  book,  and  has  evidently  had  much  influence  on 
his  whole  speculations.  He  describes  the  advantages  which 
the  colonist  derives  from  the  arrival  of  other  settlers.  "  His 
land  yields  no  more  wheat  or  potatoes  than  before,  but  it  does 
yield  far  more  of  all  the  necessaries  and  comforts  of  life.  His 
labour  upon  it  will  bring  no  heavier  crops,  and  we  will  suppose 
no  more  valuable  crops,  but  it  will  bring  far  more  of  all  the 
other  things  for  which  men  work  "  (p.  168).  That  is  true,  but 
it  is  not  to  the  purpose.  The  new  settler  required  a  market, 
and  population  brought  it;  but  although  population  up  to  a 
certain  point  is  beneficial,  you  cannot  for  that  reason  declare 
that  beyond  that  point  it  cannot  possibly  become  embarrassing ; 
for  on  Mr.  George's  own  hypothesis  the  ground  yields  no  more 
wheat  and  potatoes  than  before,  and  the  limit  to  convenient 
population  is  prescribed  by  the  amount  of  food  the  ground 
yields,  and  not  by  the  quantity  of  other  commodities  which 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     481 

skilled  labour  can  produce.  If  population  were  to  exceed  what 
that  stock  of  food  would  adequately  serve,  then  new-comers 
would  find  little  comfort  in  Mr.  George's  rhetorical  common- 
place that  they  had  two  hands  and  only  one  mouth.  His  simple 
confidence,  that  they  never  can  be  at  a  loss,  because  they  can 
get  food  by  exchange  as  well  as  by  direct  production,  is  a  mere 
dream,  because  he  forgets  that  the  people  they  are  to  exchange 
with  are  in  the  same  case  as  themselves.  They  can  only  give 
food  in  exchange  for  other  things  so  long  as  they  raise  more 
food  than  serves  their  own  numbers,  and  when  their  numbers 
increase  beyond  that  point,  they  will  have  no  food  to  sell.  The 
limit  to  subsistence  is  not  the  productive  capacity  of  labour, 
but  the  productive  capacity  of  land. 

Mr,  George's  argument  rests  on  another  very  curious  fallacy. 
He  builds  his  whole  theorj^  of  distribution  on  the  fact  of  the  ex- 
tension of  the  margin  of  cultivation  from  better  to  worse  soils, 
but  in  the  same  breath  he  denies  the  existence  of  the  very 
conditions  that  alone  make  that  fact  possible.  Nobody  would 
resort  to  worse  land  unless  the  better  were  unable  to  furnish 
indefinite  supplies  at  the  old  cost,  i.e.,  unless  the  principle  of 
diminishing  return  prevailed  in  agriculture.  Nor  would  any 
one  resort  to  worse  land  until  it  paid  him  to  do  so,  i.e.,  until 
the  produce  of  this  worse  land  became,  through  a  rise  in  its 
price  or  through  improvements  in  the  art  of  agriculture,  equal 
in  net  value  to  the  produce  previously  yielded  by  the  worst 
land  then  in  cultivation.  Mr.  George  denies  the  principle  of 
diminishing  return.  He  denies  "  that  the  recourse  to  lower 
points  of  production  involves  a  smaller  aggregate  of  produce 
iu  proportion  to  the  labour  expended."  He  denies  this,  "  even 
where  there  is  no  advance  in  the  arts  and  the  recourse  to  lower 
points  of  production  is  clearly  the  result  of  the  increased  de- 
mand of  an  increased  population.  For,"  says  he,  "  increased 
population  of  itself,  and  without  any  advance  of  the  arts,  im- 
plies an  increase  in  the  productive  power  of  labour  "  (p.  163). 
But  the  question  is,  does  it  imply  any  increase  in  the  produc- 
tive power  of  the  soil  ?  Mr.  George  contends  that  it  does,  but 
only  on  the  superior  soils,  not  on  the  inferior.  Increasing 
population,  in  his  opinion,  renders  all  labour  so  much  more 
effective  that  "  the  gain  in  the  superior  qualities  of  land  will 

I  I 


482  Contemporary  Socialism. 

more  than  compensate  for  the  diminished  production  on  the 
land  last  brought  in  "  (p.  165).  Now  to  all  this  there  is  one 
simple  answer:  why  then  resort  to  inferior  soils  at  all?  If 
crowding  on  the  superior  soils  can  make  those  soils  indefinitely 
productive,  why  go  farther  and  fare  worse  ?  There  can  be  no 
reason  for  having  recourse  to  worse  land,  but  that  the  better 
has  ceased  to  yield  enough  at  the  old  cost.  Organization  and 
economy  of  labour  are  excellent  things,  but  they  cannot  press 
from  the  udder  more  milk  than  it  contains,  or  rear  on  the 
meadow  more  sheep  than  it  will  carry,  or  grow  on  a  limited 
area  available  for  cultivation  more  than  a  definite  store  of 
food. 

But  while  Mr.  George  denies  that  there  is  anj'thing  to  force 
people  to  poorer  soils,  he  supposes  at  the  same  time  that  they 
go  freely  in  order  to  get  a  less  profit.  He  holds  the  amount  of 
return  obtained  from  cultivating  the  least  productive  land 
in  use  to  be  the  lowest  rate  of  return  for  which  anybody  will 
invest  his  capital,  and  therefore  to  serve  in  some  sense  as  a 
standard  rate  of  remuneration  for  all  applications  of  capital 
and  labour.  Nobody,  he  declares,  will  work  for  less  than  he 
can  make  on  land  that  pays  no  rent.  But  will  any  one  work 
such  land  for  less  than  he  can  make  in  other  industries?  That 
is  what  Mr.  George  supposes  to  be  done  every  day,  although 
he  laughs  at  the  idea  of  there  being  any  necessity  for  doing  it. 
lb  need  not  be  said  that  men  are  not  such  lunatics.  They  are 
1  eally  forced  to  go  to  worse  soils  because  the  better  cannot  in- 
crease their  yield  indefinitely  at  the  same  cost,  and  they  never 
go  till  they  possess  a  reasonable  expectation  of  making  as  much 
out  of  the  worse  land  as  they  did  before  out  of  the  better. 

From  all  these  remarkable  misconceptions  of  the  working  of 
rent,  and  of  the  theory  of  Ricardo  on  the  subject,  which  he 
professes  to  follow,  he  draws  his  first  law  of  distribution,  which 
is  nevertheless,  so  far  as  it  goes,  undoubtedly  correct:  "Rent 
depends  on  the  margin  of  cultivation,  rising  as  it  falls  and  fall- 
ing as  it  rises  "  (p.  155). 

To  find  the  law  of  rent,  he  has  told  us,  is  to  find  at  the  same 
time  its  correlatives,  the  laws  of  wages  and  interest,  and  these 
laws  accordingly  he  states  thus :  "  Wages  depend  on  the 
margin  of  cultivation,  falling  as  it  falls  and  rising  as  it  rises. 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     483 

Interest  (its  ratio  witli  wages  being  fixed  by  tiie  net  power  of 
increase  which  attaches  to  capital)  depends  on  the  margin 
of  cultivation,  falling  as  it  falls  and  rising  as  it  rises  "  (p. 
156).  He  is  not  content,  however,  with  merely  inferring  these 
two  laws  as  corollaries  from  the  law  of  rent,  but  thinks  it 
necessary  to  construct  for  wages  and  interest  a  certain  inde- 
pendent connection  with  the  movement  of  the  margin  of  culti- 
vation. To  do  so,  he  first  reduces  interest,  as  he  had  already 
reduced  profits,  to  a  form  of  wages ;  he  then  erects  all  the 
different  forms  of  wages  (i.e.,  every  form  of  income  except  rent) 
into  a  single  hierarchical  system,  in  which  there  are  many 
different  rates  of  remuneration,  occasioned  by  the  necessity  of 
compensating  different  risks  and  exertions,  but  all  moving  up 
and  down  concurrently  with  a  certain  general  rate  of  wages  at 
the  bottom  of  the  scale ;  and  he  finally  connects  this  general 
or  standard  rate  of  wages  with  the  margin  of  cultivation,  by 
saying  that  no  one  would  work  at  anything  else  for  less  than 
he  can  make  on  land  open  to  him  free  of  rent,  and  that  there- 
fore the  income  made  by  cultivating  such  land  must  be  the 
lowest  going. 

Mr.  George's  view  of  the  nature  of  interest  is  peculiar.  He 
considers  it  to  be  the  natural  increase  of  capital,  the  fruit  of 
inherent  reproductive  powers,  like  the  increase  of  a  calf  into 
a  cow,  or  of  a  hen  into  a  hen  and  chickens ;  and  because 
interest  comes  in  this  way  freely  from  nature,  he  believes  the 
private  appropriation  of  it  to  be  thoroughly  just,  although  he 
presently  gives  precisely  the  same  reason  for  declaring  rent 
to  be  theft.  It  is  unnecessary  to  discuss  either  the  truth  or 
the  consistency  of  this  doctrine  here,  and  I  refer  to  it  now 
merely  to  explain  that  although  Mr.  George  thus  justifies 
interest  as  being  the  price  of  a  natural  force,  he  introduces 
it  into  his  theory  of  the  origin  of  poverty,  as  the  price  of 
human  labour.  "  The  primary  division  of  wealth,"  he  says, 
"  is  dual,  not  tripartite.  Capital  is  but  a  form  of  labour,  and 
its  distinction  from  labour  is  in  reality  but  a  subdivision,  just 
as  the  division  of  labour  into  skilled  and  unskilled  would  be. 
In  our  examination  we  have  reached  the  same  point  as  would 
have  been  attained  had  we  simply  treated  capital  as  a  form 
of   labour,  and   sought  the   law  which   divides   the    produce 


484  Contemporary  Socialism. 

between  rent  and  wages ;  that  is  to  say  between  tlie  possessors 
of  the  two  factors,  natural  substance  and  powers  and  human 
exertion — which  two  factors,  by  their  union,  produce  all 
wealth  "  (p.  144).  The  difference  between  interest  and  wages 
is  but  as  the  difference  between  the  wages  of  skilled  labour 
and  the  wages  of  unskilled ;  the  wages  of  skilled  labour  is 
only  the  wages  of  unskilled,  'plus  some  consideration  for  the 
skill,  or  for  the  time  spent  in  training,  or  for  drawbacks  of 
various  kinds ;  and  the  wages  of  unskilled  labour  is  fixed  by 
the  amount  that  can  be  made  on  land  that  pays  no  rent. 
Profits,  salaries,  stipends,  fees  are,  in  the  same  way  as  interest, 
declared  to  be  modes  of  wages.  The  £50,000  a  year  of  the 
merchant  prince,  it  seems,  is  just  the  £60  of  the  day-labourer, 
with  £49,950  added  to  compensate  him  for  the  additional  perils 
or  drawbacks  or  discomforts  of  his  life.  All  incomes,  except 
the  landowner's,  row  in  the  same  boat,  and  the  day-labourer's 
sets  the  stroke.  "When  the  margin  of  cultivation  descends,  he 
is  the  first  to  suffer,  and  then  all  the  rest  suffer  with  him.  If 
he  loses  £10  a  year,  they  successively  lose  £10  too ;  the  doctor 
or  bank-agent  will  have  £490,  instead  of  £500;  the  railway 
chairman,  £4,990,  instead  of  £5,000;  the  merchant  prince, 
£49,990,  instead  of  £50,000;  and  their  loss  is  the  landlord's 
gain.  Here  then  we  see  the  whole  mystery  of  iniquity  as  Mr. 
George  professes  to  unravel  it.  "  The  wealth  produced  in 
every  community  is  divided  into  two  parts  by  what  may  be 
termed  the  rent  line,  which  is  fixed  by  the  margin  of  cultiva- 
tion, or  the  return  which  labour  and  capital  could  obtain  from 
such  natural  opportunities  as  are  free  to  them  without  payment 
of  rent.  From  the  part  of  produce  below  this  line,  wages  and 
interest  must  be  paid.  All  that  is  above  goes  to  the  owners 
of  land"  (p.  121). 

Mr.  George  here  confounds  the  margin  of  cultivation  with 
the  margin  of  appropriation.  When  economists  speak  of  an 
extension  of  the  margin  of  cultivation,  they  mean  a  resort  to 
less  productive  land,  and  that  is  always  accompanied  by  a  rise 
of  rent;  but  an  extension  of  the  margin  of  appropriation  may 
be  a  resort  to  more  productive  land,  and  jnay  occasion  a  fall 
of  rent,  as  has  been  done  in  Europe  to-day  through  appro- 
priation in  America.     But  what  in  reality  he  builds  his  argu- 


The  Agi'arian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     485 

meni  on  is  neither  the  movement  of  the  margin  of  cnltivation, 
nor  the  movement  of  the  margin  of  appropriation,  but  simply 
the  existence  of  abundance  of  unappropriated  land.  AYh^re 
that  exists,  rent  will,  of  course,  bs  low,  and  wEiges  Avill  be 
high,  for  nobody  will  give  much  for  land  when  he  can  get 
plenty  for  nothing  at  a  little  distance  off,  and  nobody  will  work 
at  anything  else  for  less  than  he  can  make  on  land  that  he 
may  have  for  nothing.  For  such  land  supplies  labourers  with 
an  alternative.  It  is  not  the  best  of  alternatives,  for  it  needs 
capital  before  one  can  make  use  of  it,  and  it  takes  time  before 
any  return  is  made  from  it.  A  diversity  of  national  industries, 
for  example,  is  better,  and  raises  wages  more  effectively. 
Agricultural  wages  are  higher  in  the  manufacturing  counties 
of  England  than  in  the  purely  agricultural;  and  they  are 
higher  in  the  manufacturing  Eastern  States  of  Mr.  George's 
own  country  than  in  the  purely  agricultural  States  of  the 
West,  which  possess  the  largest  amount  of  unappropriated 
land.  The  reason  of  this  is  twofold  :  other  industries  iccrease 
the  competition  for  labour  generally,  and  create,  at  the  same 
time,  a  better  market  for  farm  produce.  Unoccupied  land 
would  act — though  less  effectually — in  the  same  way  as  an 
alternative ;  but  few  countries  are  fortunate  enough  to  possess 
much  of  it,  and  as  Mr.  G-eorge  does  not  propose  to  interfere 
with  the  occupation  of  land,  but  only  to  tax  the  occupiers,  he 
has  no  scheme  for  showing  how  countries  that  have  it  not  are 
to  get  it.  It  is  easy,  of  course,  to  call  it  from  the  vasty  deep. 
"  Put  to  any  one  capable  of  thought,"  says  Mr.  George,  "  this 
question :  '  Suppose  there  should  arise  from  the  English  Chan- 
nel or  the  German  Ocean  a  Neman's  land  on  which  common 
labour  to  an  unlimited  amount  should  be  able  to  make  ten 
shillings  a  day,  and  which  would  remain  unappropriated  and 
of  free  access  like  the  commons  which  once  comprised  so  large 
a  part  of  English  soil.  What  would  be  the  effect  upon  wages 
in  England  ? '  He  would  at  once  tell  j^ou  that  common  wages 
throughout  England  must  soon  increase  to  ten  shillings  a 
day "  (p.  207).  Perhaps  so ;  but  a  little  more  thought  would 
teach  him  that  "  a  Neman's  land  on  which  common  labour  to 
an  unlimited  amount  should  be  able  to  make  ten  shillings  a 
day"  must  be  itself  unlimited  in  extent,  and  could  not  be 


486  Contemporary  Socialism. 

accommodated  in  the  English  Channel,  Apart  from  preter- 
natural conditions,  it  could  not  afford  remunerative  employment 
to  more  than  a  definite  number  of  occupants  and  cultivators, 
and  when  it  came  to  be  entirely  occupied,  England  would 
stand  exactly  as  it  does  at  present.  If  the  millennium  of  the 
working  class  is  to  depend  on  the  discovery  of  a  Noman's  land 
of  infinite  expansibility,  it  must  be  indefinitely  postponed. 

But  supposing  such  an  alternative  existed  and  did  influence 
the  amount  employers  pay  their  workmen,  how  is  it  to  influ- 
ence in  the  same  direction  the  amount  they  reserve  to  them- 
selves ?  It  is  true,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  wages  and  interest 
generally  rise  and  fall  together,  for  the  simple  reason  that  they 
are  generally  subject  to  the  same  influences.  When  capital  is 
busily  employed,  so  is  necessarily  labour,  and  then  both  wages 
and  interest  are  high ;  when  capital  is  largely  unemployed,  so 
is  naturally  labour  also,  and  then  both  wages  and  interest  are 
low.  But  an  influence  like  that  which  is  now  adduced  by  Mr. 
George  does  not  act  on  labourer  and  employer  alike.  It  sup- 
plies the  labourer  with  an  alternative  which  strengthens  his 
hands  in  his  battle  for  wages  with  employers.  Does  it  then  at 
the  same  time  strengthen  the  employer  in  his  battle  with  the 
labourer  ?  Does  it  fiirst  raise  wages  at  the  expense  of  profits, 
and  then  raise  profits  at  the  expense  of  wages?  It  clearly 
cannot.  To  argue  as  if  the  existence  of  alternative  work 
which  benefits  the  labourer,  must  benefit  the  employer  in  the 
same  degree,  and  as  if  the  want  of  it  must  injure  the  employer 
because  it  injures  the  labourer,  is  simply  to  misunderstand  the 
very  elements  of  the  case.  One  might  as  well  argue  that 
because  the  heights  of  Alma  were  a  decided  strategical  advan- 
tage to  the  Russians,  who  were  posted  on  them,  they  were 
therefore  an  equal  advantage  to  the  Allies,  who  had  to  scale 
them. 

Laws  of  distribution,  which  are  founded  on  a  series  of  such 
arbitrary  absurdities  as  those  which  I  have  successively  ex- 
posed, are  manifestly  incapable  of  throwing  any  rational  light 
on  the  causes  of  poverty,  or  giving  any  practical  guidance  to 
its  amelioration.  But,  absurd  as  they  may  be,  they  are  at 
least  propounded  with  considerable  parade,  and  we  are  there- 
fore quite  unprepared  for  the  strange  turn  Mr.  George  next 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     487 

chooses  to  take.  It  will  be  remembered  tbat  the  only  reason 
why  he  undertook  to  search  for  these  laws  at  all  was,  that 
by  means  of  them  he  might  explain  why  wages  tended  to  sink 
to  a  minimum  that  would  give  but  a  bare  living ;  but  now 
that  he  has  discovered  those  laws,  he  declines  to  apply  them 
to  the  solution  of  this  problem.  He  will  not  draw  the  very 
conclusion  he  has  laid  down  all  his  apparatus  to  establish.  He 
will  not  solve  the  problem  he  has  promised  us  to  solve;  in  fact, 
he  tells  us  he  never  meant  to  solve  it;  he  never  thought  or 
said  wages  tended  to  sink  to  a  minimum  that  would  give  a 
bare  living ;  he  never  said  they  tended  to  sink  at  all ;  all  he 
meant  to  assert  was  that  if  they  increased,  they  did  not  in- 
crease so  fast  as  the  national  wealth  generally.  He  used  "  the 
word  wages  not  in  the  sense  of  a  quantity,  but  in  the  sense  of 
a  proportion"  (p.  154).  He  will  not  therefore,  after  all,  show 
us  why  the  poor  are  getting  poorer ;  but  he  will  read  for  us, 
if  we  like,  another  riddle,  why  they  are  not  growing  rich  so 
fast  as  some  of  their  neighbours.  In  the  name  of  the  patient 
reader,  I  may  be  permitted  to  lodge  a  humble  but  firm  protest 
against  this  eccentric  and  sudden  change  of  front.  Mr.  George 
ought  really  to  have  decided  what  problem  he  was  to  write 
about  before  he  began  to  write  at  all,  and  we  may  therefore 
for  the  present  dismiss  both  his  problem  and  his  explanation 
till  he  makes  up  his  mind. 

III.  Mr,  George^ s  Remedy. 
After  our  experience  of  his  problem  and  his  explanation, 
we  cannot  indulge  expectations  of  finding  any  serious  or 
genuine  worth  in  the  practical  remedy  Mr.  George  has  to 
prescribe ;  and  we  hear,  without  a  thought  of  incongruity,  the 
lofty  terms  in  which,  like  other  medicines  we  know  of,  it  is 
advertised  to  the  world  by  its  inventor  as  a  panacea  for  every 
disease  society  is  heir  to.  "  What  I  propose,"  he  says,  "  as  the 
simple  yet  sovereign  remedy  which  will  raise  wages,  increase 
the  earnings  of  capital,  extirpate  pauperism,  abolish  poverty, 
give  remunerative  employment  to  whoever  wishes  it,  afford 
free  scope  to  human  powers,  lessen  crimes,  elevate  morals  and 
taste  and  intelligence,  purify  government,  and  carry  civilization 
to  3^et  nobler  heights,  is — to  appropriate  rent  by  taxation" 


488  Contemporary  Socialism. 

(p.  288).  And  the  direction  for  applying  the  remedy  is  equally 
simple :  it  is  to  "  abolish  all  taxation  save  that  upon  land 
values"  [ibid.).  This  remedy  is  currently  described  as  the 
nationalization  of  land ;  but  nationalization  of  land  is  a  phrase 
which  stands  for  several  very  different  and  even  conflicting 
ideas.  "With  the  usual  fatality  of  revolutionary  parties,  the 
English  land  nationalizers  are  already  broken  into  three  sepa- 
rate organizations,  and  represent  at  least  three  mutually  in- 
compatible schemes  of  opinion.  There  is  first  the  socialist 
idea  of  abolishing  both  individual  ownership  and  individual 
occupation  of  land,  and  cultivating  the  soil  of  the  country  by 
means  of  productive  associations  or  rural  communes.  Then 
there  is  the  exactly  opposite  principle  of  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace 
and  his  friends,  who  are  so  much  in  love  with  both  individual 
ownership  and  individual  occupation  that  their  whole  aim  is 
to  compel  us  all  by  law  to  become  occupying  owners  of  land, 
whether  we  have  any  mind  to  be  so  or  no.  And,  finally,  we 
have  the  scheme  of  Mr.  George,  which  must  be  carefully  dis- 
tinguished from  the  others,  because  he  would  destroy  individual 
ownership  but  leave  individual  occupation  perfectly  intact. 
His  non-interference  with  individual  occupation  is  remarkable, 
because,  as  we  have  seen,  he  declares  the  cause  of  poverty 
to  be  the  exclusion  of  unemployed  labour  from  the  opportunity 
of  cultivating  land,  and  because  that  exclusion  is  chiefly  due 
to  the  prior  occupation  of  the  land  by  earlier  settlers.  Mr. 
George,  however,  thinks  he  can  provide  a  plentiful  supply  of 
unoccupied  land,  at  a  nominal  price,  for  an  indefinite  number 
of  new-comers  without  disturbing  any  prior  occupant.  He 
would  do  it  by  merely  abolishing  the  private  owner  and  asking 
the  occupant  to  pay  his  rent  to  the  State  instead  of  to  a 
landlord,  and  he  explains  to  us  how  it  is  that  this  simple 
expedient  is  to  effect  the  purpose  he  desires.  "  The  selling 
price  of  land  would  fall ;  land  speculation  would  receive  its 
death-blow ;  land  monopolization  would  no  longer  pay.  Mil- 
lions and  millions  of  acres,  from  which  settlers  are  now  shut 
out  by  high  prices,  would  be  abandoned  by  their  present 
owners,  or  sold  to  settlers  upon  nominal  terms.  And  this  not 
merely  on  the  frontiers,  but  within  what  are  now  considered 
profitable   districts.     .     ,     .     And  even  in  densely  populated 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     489 

England  would  such  a  policy  throw  open  to  cultivation  many 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  acres  now  held  as  private  parks, 
deer  preserves,  and  shooting  grounds.  For  this  simple  device 
of  placing  all  taxes  on  the  value  of  land  would  be  in  effect 
putting  up  the  land  at  auction  to  whoever  would  pay  the 
highest  rent  to  the  State.  The  demand  for  land  fixes  its  value, 
and  hence  if  taxes  were  placed  so  as  to  very  nearly  consume 
that  value,  the  man  who  wished  to  hold  land  without  using 
it  would  have  to  pay  very  nearly  what  it  would  be  worth  to 
any  one  who  wanted  to  use  it"  (p.  309). 

Putting  up  land  to  auction  will  not  secure  cheap  or  nomin- 
ally rented  farms  to  an  indefinite  number  of  new-comers, 
unless  there  is  an  indefinite  supply  of  land  to  divide  into  farms, 
but  in  the  present  world  that  is  not  so ;  and  when  the  existing 
stock  of  agricultural  land  is  exhausted,  and  every  man  has  his 
farm,  but  there  is  no  more  for  any  new-comer,  what  is  Mr. 
George's  remedy  then  ?  Abolition  of  property  in  land  will  of 
course  abolish  all  trading  in  such  property ;  but  trading  in 
landed  property  does  not  restrict  its  occupation.  The  land 
speculator,  while  he  holds  the  land,  of  course  keeps  out  another 
competitor  from  the  ownership,  but  he  keeps  nobody  from  its 
occupation  and  cultivation.  He  is  surely  as  ready  as  anybody 
else  to  make  money,  if  money  is  to  be  made,  by  letting  it,  even 
by  putting  it  up  to  auction,  if  Mr.  George  prefers  that  mode  of 
letting.  The  transfer  of  the  power  of  letting  to  the  State  will 
not  secure  a  tenant  any  faster.  And  as  to  the  private  parks, 
deer  forests  and  shootings  of  England,  Mr.  George  forgets  that 
they  are,  most  of  them,  at  present  rented,  and  not,  as  he  seems 
to  fancy,  owned  by  their  occupants,  and  that  it  would  not 
make  a  straw  of  difference  to  them  whether  they  paid  their 
rents  to  the  Crown  factor  or  to  the  landlord's  agent.  Since 
Mr.  George  does  not  prohibit  the  making  of  fortunes,  he  can- 
not prevent  commercial  kings  from  America  or  great  brewers 
from  England  hiring  forests  in  the  Scotch  Highlands.  And 
since,  in  spite  of  his  celebrated  declaration,  that  "to  the  landed 
estates  of  the  Duke  of  Westminster  the  poorest  child  that  is 
born  in  London  to-day  has  as  much  right  as  has  his  eldest  son," 
he  would  still  leave  the  Duke  a  princely  income  from  the  rents 
of  the  buildings  upon  his  estates,  and  would  suffer  him  to  enjoy 


490  Conte^nporary  Socialism. 

it  without  paying  a  single  tax  or  rate  on  it  all  (p.  320), 
why  should  the  Duke  give  up  his  forest  in  Assynt,  merely 
because  the  Crown  is  to  draw  the  rent  instead  of  the  Duke 
of  Sutherland?  Mr.  G-eorge  accordingly  proposes  a  remedy 
that  would  remedy  nothing,  but  leave  things  just  as  they 
are.  Deer  forests  and  the  like  may  not  be  the  best  use 
of  the  land,  but  the  particular  change  Mr.  George  suggests 
would  not  suppress  them  or  even  in  the  slightest  degree 
check  their  spread,  and  would  not  throw  the  ground  now  occu- 
pied by  them  into  the  ordinary  market  for  cultivation.  And, 
besides,  even  if  it  did,  the  land  so  provided  for  new-comers 
would  necessarily  soon  come  to  an  end,  and  with  it  Mr. 
George's"  simple  and  sovereign  remedy,"  at  least  in  its  specific 
operation. 

But  it  is  noteworthy  that  in  his  lectures  in  this  country 
in  1884,  Mr.  George  made  little  account  of  the  specific  opera- 
tion of  his  remedy  as  a  means  of  furnishing  unemployed 
labourers  with  a  practicable  alternative  in  agricultural  pro- 
duction, to  which  they  might  continue  indefinitely  to  resort, 
and  that  he  preferred  for  the  most  part  drawing  his  cure  for 
poverty  from  the  public  revenue  which  the  confiscation  of  rent 
would  place  at  the  disposal  of  the  community.  Now  as  to  this 
aspect  of  his  remedy,  it  is  surely  one  of  the  oddest  of  his 
delusions  to  dream  of  curing  pauperism  by  multiplying  the 
recipients  of  poor  relief,  and  taking  away  from  it,  as  he  claims 
credit  for  doing,  through  the  countenance  of  numbers,  that 
reproach  which  has  hitherto  been  the  strongest  preventive 
against  it.  Besides,  he  and  his  friends  greatly  exaggerate  the 
amount  of  the  fund  the  country  would  derive  from  the  rent  of 
its  ground.  It  would  really  fall  far  short  of  paying  the  whole 
of  our  present  taxation,  not  to  speak  of  leaving  anything  over 
for  wild  schemes  of  speculative  beneficence.  The  rural  rent 
of  the  country  is  only  seventy  millions,  and  that  sum  includes 
the  rent  of  buildings,  which  Mr.  George  does  not  propose  to 
touch,  and  which  would  probably  in  the  aggregate  balance  the 
ground  rent  of  towns,  which  he  includes  in  his  confiscation 
project.  Now  our  local  taxation  alone  comes  very  near  that 
figure,  and  certainly  the  people  generally  can  scarcely  be  ex- 
pected to  rise  from  a  condition  of  alleged  poverty  to  one  of 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     49 1 

substantial  wealth,  or  even  comfort,  through  merely  having 
their  local  rates  paid  for  them. 

The  result  would  therefore  be  poor,  even  if  no  compensation 
were  to  be  made  to  the  present  receivers  of  the  rent ;  but  with 
the  compensation  price  to  pay,  it  would  be  really  too  ridicu- 
lously small  to  throw  a  whole  nation  into  labour  and  disorder 
for.  Much  ma}''  be  done — much  must  be  done — to  make  the 
land  of  the  country  more  available  and  more  profitable  for  the 
wants  of  the  body  of  the  people,  but  not  one  jot  of  what  is 
required  would  be  done  by  mere  nationalization  of  the  owner- 
ship, or  even  done  better  on  such  a  basis  than  on  that  which 
exists.  The  things  that  are  requisite  and  necessary  would 
remain  still  to  be  done,  though  land  were  nationalized  to- 
morrow, and  they  can  be  equally  well  done  without  introduc- 
ing that  cumbrous  innovation  at  all.  With  compensation  the 
scheme  is  futile  ;  without  it,  it  is  repugnant  to  a  healthy  moral 
sense.  Mr.  George  indeed  regards  confiscation  as  an  article  of 
faith.  It  is  of  the  essence  of  the  message  he  keeps  on  preach- 
ing with  so  much  conviction  and  courage  and  fervour.  Private 
property  in  land,  he  tells  us,  is  robbery,  and  rent  is  theft,  and 
the  reason  he  offers  for  these  strong  assertions  is  that  nothing 
can  rightly  be  private  property  which  is  not  the  fruit  of  human 
labour,  and  that  land  is  not  the  fruit  of  human  labour,  but  the 
gift  of  God.  As  the  gift  of  God,  it  was,  he  believes,  intended 
for  all  men  alike,  and  therefore  its  private  appropriation  seems 
to  him  unjust.  Under  these  circumstances  he  considers  it  as 
preposterous  to  compensate  landowners  for  the  loss  of  their 
land,  as  it  would  be  to  compensate  thieves  for  the  restitution 
of  their  spoil.  To  confiscate  land  is  only  to  take  one's  own, 
Mr.  George  has  no  difficulty  about  the  sound  of  the  word,  nor 
is  he  troubled  by  any  subtleties  as  to  the  length  it  is  proper  to 
go  in  the  work.  Mr.  Mill,  whose  writings  probably  put  Mr. 
George  first  on  this  track,  proposed  to  intercept  for  national 
purposes  only  the  future  unearned  increase  of  the  rent  of  land, 
only  that  portion  of  the  future  increase  of  rent  which  should 
not  be  due  to  the  expenditure  of  labour  and  capital  on  the  soil. 
Mr.  George  would  appropriate  the  entire  rent,  the  earned  in- 
crease as  well  as  the  unearned,  the  past  as  well  as  the  future  ; 
with  this  exception,  that  interest  on  such  improvements  as  are 


492  Contemporary  Socialism. 

the  fruit  of  human  exertion,  and  are  clearly  distinguishable 
from  the  land  itself,  would  be  allowed  for  a  moderate  period. 
He  says  in  one  place,  "  But  it  will  be  said  :  These  are  improve- 
ments which  in  time  become  indistinguishable  from  the  land 
itself  !  Very  well;  then  the  title  to  the  improvements  becomes 
blended  with  the  title  to  the  land  ;  the  individual  right  is  lost 
in  the  common  right.  It  is  the  greater  that  swallows  up  the 
less,  not  the  less  that  swallows  up  the  greater.  Nature  does 
not  proceed  from  man,  but  man  from  nature,  and  it  is  into  the 
bosom  of  nature  that  he  and  all  his  works  must  return  again  " 
(p.  242).  And  in  another  place,  speaking  of  the  separation  of 
the  value  of  the  land  from  the  value  of  the  improvements,  he 
says :  "  In  the  oldest  country  in  the  world  no  difficulty  what- 
ever can  attend  the  separation,  if  all  that  be  attempted  is  to 
separate  the  value  of  the  clearly  distinguishable  improvements 
made  within  a  moderate  period,  from  the  value  of  the  land, 
should  they  be  destroyed.  This  manifestly  is  all  that  justice 
or  policy  requires.  Absolute  accuracy  is  impossible  in  any 
system,  and  to  attempt  to  separate  all  the  human  race  has  done 
from  what  nature  originally  provided  would  be  as  absurd  as 
impracticable.  A  swamp  drained,  or  a  hill  terraced  by  the 
Romans,  constitutes  now  as  much  a  part  of  the  natural  ad- 
vantages of  the  British  Isles  as  though  the  work  had  been  done 
by  earthquake  or  glacier.  The  fact  that  after  a  certain  lapse 
of  time  the  value  of  such  permanent  improvements  would  be 
considered  as  having  lapsed  into  that  of  the  land,  and  would  be 
taxed  accordingly,  could  have  no  deterrent  effect  on  euch  im- 
provements, for  such  works  are  frequently  undertaken  upon 
leases  for  years  "  (p.  302).  The  sum  of  this  teaching  seems  to 
be  that  Mr.  George  would  recognise  no  separate  value  in  any 
improvements  except  buildings,  and  would  be  disposed  to  ap- 
propriate even  them  after  such  lapse  of  time  as  would  make  it 
not  absolutely  unprofitable  to  erect  them. 

What  Mr.  George  fails  to  perceive  is  that  agricultural  land 
is  in  no  sense  more  a  gift  of  God,  and  in  no  sense  less  an 
artificial  product  of  human  labour,  than  other  commodities — 
than  gold,  for  example,  or  cattle,  or  furniture,  in  which  he 
owns  private  property  to  be  indisputably  just.  Some  of  the 
richest  land  in  England  lies  in  the  fen  country,  and  that  land 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.      49^ 

is  as  much  the  product  of  engineering  skill  and  prolonged 
labour  as  Portland  Harbour  or  Menai  Bridge.  Before  the  days 
of  Sir  Cornelius  Vermuyden  it  was  part  of  the  bottom  of  the 
sea,  and  its  inhabitants,  as  they  are  described  by  Camden, 
trode  about  on  stilts,  and  lived  by  snaring  waterfowl.  Some 
of  the  best  land  in  Belgium  was  barren  sand-heaps  a  hundred 
years  ago,  and  has  been  made  what  it  is  only  by  the  continuous 
and  untiring  labour  of  its  small  proprietors.  "  God  made  the 
sea,  man  made  the  dry  land,"  is  a  proverb  among  the  Dutch, 
who  have  certainly  made  their  own  country  as  much  as  Mr. 
George  has  made  his  book.  In  these  cases  the  labour  and 
the  results  of  the  labour  are  obvious,  but  no  cultivated  land 
exists  anywhere  that  is  not  the  product  of  much  labour — 
certainly  much  more  labour  than  Mr.  George  seems  to  have 
any  idea  of.  In  the  evidence  taken  before  the  recent  Crofters' 
Commission,  Mr.  Greig,  who  conducted  the  Duke  of  Suther- 
land's improvements  in  the  Strath  of  Kildonan,  stated  that 
the  cost  of  reclaiming  1,300  acres  of  land  there,  and  fur- 
nishing them  with  the  requisite  buildings  for  nine  variously 
sized  farms,  was  £46,000.  Apart  from  the  buildings,  the  mere 
work  of  reclamation  alone  is  generally  estimated  to  have  cost 
£20  an  acre,  and  in  another  part  of  the  same  estates  an  equally 
extensive  piece  of  reclamation  is  said  to  have  cost  £30  an  acre. 
By  means  of  this  great  expenditure  of  capital  and  labour,  land 
that  would  hardly  fetch  a  reut  of  a  shilling  an  acre  before  was 
worth  twenty  or  thirty  shillings  an  acre  after.  Not  the  build- 
ings only,  but  the  land  itself  has  been  made  what  it  is  by 
labour.  It  has  been  adapted  to  a  useful  office  by  human  skill 
as  really  as  the  clay  is  by  the  potter,  or  the  timber  by  the 
wright.  Deduct  from  the  rent  of  these  reclaimed  acres  the 
value  contributed  by  human  labour,  and  how  much  would 
remain  to  represent  the  gift  of  God  ?  And  would  it  be  greater 
or  less  than  would  remain  after  a  hke  process  applied,  say,  to  a 
sovereign  or  to  a  nugget  of  gold  ?  Mr.  George  has  no  scruple 
about  the  justice  of  private  property  and  inheritance  in  the 
nugget,  and  indeed  in  all  kinds  of  movable  wealth.  "  The 
pen  with  which  I  am  writing,"  he  says,  for  example,  "  is  justly 
mine.  No  other  human  being  can  rightfully  laj'  claim  to  it, 
for  in  me  is  the  title  of  the  original  producers  who  made  it " 


494  Contemporary  Socialism. 

(p.  236).  The  original  producer  of  the  nugget  appropriated 
what  was  surely  a  gift  of  God  as  much  as  the  clays  or  loams 
of  husbandry ;  and  if  he,  as  Mr.  George  admits,  has  "  a  clear 
and  indefeasible  title  to  the  exclusive  possession  and  enjoy- 
ment "  of  his  nugget,  and  may  transmit  that  title  by  bequest 
or  sale  unimpaired  for  an  unrestricted  period  of  time,  why  is 
the  original  producer  of  agricultural  land  to  be  held  up  as 
more  than  half  a  thief,  and  the  present  possessor  as  one 
entirely  ?  And  if  a  proprietor  has  spent  £20,000  in  buildings, 
and  £26,000  in  reclamations,  in  order  to  convert  the  surface  of 
the  earth  into  useful  arable  soil,  why  is  he  to  be  allowed  rent 
on  the  £20,000,  and  denied  it  on  the  £26,000? 

So  far  as  the  distinction  between  gifts  of  nature  and  pro- 
ducts of  labour  goes,  movable  wealth  and  immovable  stand 
on  precisely  the  same'  footing.  Both  are  alike  gifts  of  nature, 
and  both  are  alike  products  of  labour.  In  thinking  otherwise 
Mr.  George  is  certainly  supported  by  the  high  authority  of 
Mr.  Mill,  who  has  also  failed  to  recognise  how  far  arable  land 
was  really  an  artificial  product.  He  says :  "  The  land  is  not 
of  man's  creation,  and  for  a  person  to  appropriate  to  himself  a 
mere  gift  of  nature,  not  made  to  him  in  particular,  but  which 
belonged  to  all  others  until  he  took  possession  of  it,  is  primd 
facie  an  injustice  to  all  the  rest "'  (Dissert,  iv.,  289).  But  what 
is  of  man's  creation  ?  He  finds  his  materials  already  created, 
and  he  merely  appropriates  them,  and  adapts  them  to  his  own 
uses  by  labour,  exactly  as  he  does  with  the  soil  that  in  his 
hands  becomes  fruitful  fields.  Land  is  as  much  a  creation  of 
man  as  anything  else  is,  and  everything  is  as  much  a  gift  of 
God  as  land.  That  distinction  is  therefore  of  no  possible  help 
to  us.  The  true  ground  for  observing  a  difference  between  the 
right  of  property  in  land  and  the  right  of  property  in  other 
things  must  be  sought  for  elsewhere.  It  is  not  because  land 
is  a  gift  of  nature,  while  other  things  are  products  of  labour, 
but  because  land  is  at  once  limited  in  quantity,  and  essential 
to  the  production  of  the  general  necessaries  of  life.  These  are 
the  characteristics  that  make  land  a  unique  and  exceptional 
commodity,  and  require  the  right  of  property  in  it  to  be  sub- 
ject to  difierent  conditions  from  the  right  of  property  in  other 
products  of  labour.     The  justification  of  the  restriction  of  that 


The  Agrarian  Socialisvi  of  Henry  George.     495 

right  in  the  case  of  land  accordingly  rests  neither  on  theological 
dogma  nor  on  metaphj^sical  distinction,  but  on  a  plain  practical 
social  necessity.  Where  land  is  still  abundant,  where  popu- 
lation is  yet  scanty  as  compared  with  the  land  it  occupies, 
there  is  no  occasion  for  interference  ;  the  proprietor  might  enjoy 
as  absolute  a  title  as  Mr.  George  claims  over  his  pen,  without 
any  public  inconvenience,  but,  on  the  contrary,  with  all  the 
public  benefit  that  belongs  to  absolute  ownership  in  other 
things.  But  as  soon  as  population  has  increased  so  much  as  to 
compel  recourse  to  inferior  soils  for  its  subsistence,  it  becomes 
the  duty  of  society  to  see  that  the  most  productive  use  possible 
is  being  made  of  its  land,  and  to  introduce  such  a  mode  of 
tenure  as  seems  most  likely  effectually  to  secure  that  end. 
Under  these  circumstances  private  property  in  land  requires 
an  additional  justification,  besides  that  which  is  sufficient  for 
other  things  ;  it  must  be  conducive  to  the  best  use  of  the  land. 
Society  has  become  obliged  to  husband  its  resources  ;  if  it  will 
do  so  most  efficiently  by  means  of  private  property,  private 
property  will  stand  ;  if  not,  then  it  must  fall.  Of  course  land 
is  not  the  only  kind  of  property  that  is  subject  to  this  social 
claim.  All  property  is  so  held,  but  in  the  case  of  other  things 
the  claim  seldom  comes  into  open  view,  because  it  is  only  on 
exceptional  occasions  that  it  is  necessary  to  call  it  into  active 
operation.  Provisions  are  among  the  things  Mr.  George  con- 
siders not  gifts  of  God  but  products  of  labour,  but  in  a  siege 
private  property  in  provisions  would  absolutely  cease,  and  the 
social  right  would  be  all  in  all.  These  products  of  labour  would 
be  nationalized  at  that  time  because  in  the  circumstances  the 
general  interests  of  the  community  required  them  to  be  so,  and 
the  reason  why  they  are  not  nationalized  at  other  times  is  at 
bottom  really  this,  that  the  general  interest  of  the  community 
is  better  served  by  leaving  them  as  they  are.  In  some  parts 
of  the  world  all  products  of  labour  actually  are  nationalized ; 
in  Samoa,  for  example,  a  man  who  wants  anything  has  a  latent 
but  recognised  claim  to  obtain  it  from  any  man  who  has  it ; 
but  Dr.  Turner  explains  that  the  result  is  most  pernicious, 
because  while  it  has  extinguished  absolute  destitution,  it  has 
lowered  the  level  of  prosperity  and  prevented  all  progress,  no 
man  caring  to  labour  when  he  cannot  retain  the  fruits  of  his 


49 6  Contemporary  Socialism. 

labour.  Civilized  communities,  however,  have  always  perceived 
the  immense  public  advantage  of  the  institution  of  private 
property,  and  the  right  to  such  property,  of  whatever  kind, 
really  rests  in  the  last  analysis  on  a  social  justification,  and  is 
held  subject  to  a  social  claim,  if  any  reason  occurred  to  exert 
it.  In  this  respect  there  is  nothing  peculiar  about  land.  The 
only  peculiarity  about  land  is  that  a  necessity  exists  for  the 
practical  exercise  of  the  claim,  because  landed  property  involves 
the  control  of  the  national  food  supply,  and  of  other  primary 
and  essential  needs  of  the  community.  The  growth  of  popu- 
lation forces  more  and  more  imperatively  upon  us  the  necessity 
of  making  the  most  of  our  land,  and  consequently  raises  the 
question  how  far  private  property  in  such  a  subject  is  con- 
ducive to  that  end. 

Now,  in  regard  to  capital  invested  in  trade  or  manufactures, 
it  has  always  been  justly  considered  that  the  private  interest  of 
its  possessor  constitutes  the  best  guarantee  for  its  most  pro- 
ductive use,  because  the  trader  or  manufacturer  is  animated 
by  the  purely  commercial  motive  of  gaining  the  greatest  pos- 
sible increase  out  of  the  employment  of  his  capital.  But  it 
must  be  admitted  that  the  private  interest  of  the  landlord  does 
not  supply  us  with  so  sure  a  guarantee.  He  desires  wealth  no 
doubt  as  well  as  the  trader,  but  he  is  not  so  purely  influenced 
by  that  desire  in  his  use  of  his  property.  He  is  apt  to  sacrifice 
the  most  productive  use  of  land — or,  in  other  words,  his  purely 
pecuniary  interest — to  considerations  of  ease  or  pleasure,  or 
social  importance,  or  political  influence.  He  may  consolidate 
farms,  to  the  distress  of  the  small  tenants  and  the  injury  of  the 
country  generally,  merely  because  there  is  less  trouble  in 
managing  a  few  large  farmers  than  a  number  of  small ;  or  he 
may  refuse  to  give  his  tenants  those  conditions  of  tenure  that  are 
essential  to  efficient  cultivation  of  the  land,  merely  to  keep  them 
more  dependent  on  himself  in  political  conflicts.  Mr.  George, 
however,  has  a  strong  conviction  that  even  the  purely  pecuniary 
interest  of  the  private  owner  tends  to  keep  land  out  of  cultiva- 
tion, but  he  builds  his  conclusion  on  the  special  experiences 
of  land  speculation  rather  than  on  the  general  facts  of  land- 
.owning.  Of  course  if  there  were  no  land-owning,  there  would 
be  no  land  speculation ;  but  to  abolish  land-owning  merely  to 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     497 

cure  the  evils  of  land  speculation  is,  if  I  may  borrow  an  illus- 
tration of  his  own,  tantamount  to  burning  a  house  to  roast  a 
joint.  Besides,  all  that  is  alleged  is  that  speculation  keeps  a 
certain  amount  of  land  in  America  out  of  the  market.  In  other 
countries  it  suffers  from  a  contrary  reproach.  The  evil  of  the 
bandes  noires  of  France  and  the  Landinetzger  of  Germany  is 
their  excessive  activity  in  bringing  land  into  the  market,  by 
which  they  have  aggravated  the  pernicious  subdivision  of 
estates  that  exist.  In  America  the  effect  of  speculation  may 
be  different,  but  at  any  rate  keeping  land  out  of  the  market  is 
one  thing,  keeping  it  out  of  cultivation  is  another ;  and  it  is 
hard  to  see  how  speculation  should  prevent  the  extension  of 
cultivation,  because  cultivation  may  be  as  well  undertaken  by 
tenant  as  proprietor,  and  why  should  a  speculator,  who  buys 
land  to  sell  it  in  a  few  years  at  a  high  profit,  object  to  taking 
an  annual  rent  in  the  interval  from  any  one  who  thought  it 
would  pay  him  to  hire  the  land?  It  would  not  be  fair  to  con- 
demn the  landlord  for  the  sins  of  the  land  speculator,  even  if 
the  latter  were  all  that  Mr.  George's  curious  horror  of  him 
represents  him  to  be,  and  if  he  exercised  any  of  the  irrationally 
extravagant  effects  which  Mr.  George  ascribes  to  his  influence 
over  the  economy  of  things ;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  a  sober 
judgment  can  discover  no  possible  reason  why  the  private 
interest  of  a  land  speculator  as  such  should  stand  in  the  way 
of  the  cultivation  of  the  soil  he  happens  to  hold.  What  con- 
cerns us  here,  however,  is  not  the  private  interest  of  the 
speculator,  but  the  private  interest  of  the  landlord,  whether  a 
speculative  purchaser  or  not.  Now,  much  land  lies  waste  at 
present  through  the  operation  of  the  Game  Laws,  which  estab- 
lish an  artificial  protection  of  sport  as  an  alternative  industry 
against  agriculture,  but  then  the  general  institution  of  private 
property  in  land  must  not  be  credited  with  the  specific  effects 
of  the  Game  Laws,  and  need  not  be  suppressed  in  order  to  get 
rid  of  them.  The  abolition  of  these  laws  would  place  the  culture 
of  wild  animals  and  the  culture  of  domestic  animals  on  more 
equal  terms  in  the  commercial  competition,  and  would  probably 
restore  the  balance  of  the  landlord's  pecuniary  advantage  in 
favour  of  the  latter.  Besides,  it  is  not  a  question  of  ownership 
but  of  occupation  of  land  that  is  really  involved.     If  the  land 

K   K 


498  Contemporary  Socialism. 

were  nationalized  to-morrow,  the  State  would  have  to  decide 
whether  it  would  let  as  much  land  as  had  hitherto  been  let  to 
sporting  tenants ;  and  of  course  it  can  decide  that,  if  it  chooses, 
now. 

So  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge,  there  is  only  one  respect  in 
which  the  pecuniary  interest  of  the  landlord  appears  to  be 
unfavourable  to  an  extension  of  cultivation.  There  is  probably 
a  considerable  quantity  of  land  that  might  be  cultivated  with 
advantage  to  the  community  generally  by  labourers  who  ex- 
pected nothing  from  it  but  the  equivalent  of  ordinary  wages, 
and  which  is  at  present  suffered  to  lie  waste,  because  its  pro- 
duce would  be  insufficient  to  yield  anything  more  than  wages, 
and  would  afford  nothing  to  the  capitalist  farmer  as  profit  or 
to  the  landlord  as  rent.  How  far  this  operates  I  have,  of  course, 
no  means  of  knowing ;  but  here  again  one  may  deal  with 
waste  ground  if  it  were  judged  requisite  to  do  so,  without 
resorting  to  any  revolutionary  schemes  of  general  land 
nationalization.  Of  course  much  land  is  kept  in  an  inferior 
condition,  or  perhaps  absolutely  waste,  through  want  of  capital 
on  the  part  of  its  owners,  but  the  same  result  would  happen 
under  the  nationalization  plan,  through  want  of  capital  on  the 
part  of  the  tenants.  Mr.  George  does  not  propose  to  supply 
any  of  the  necessary  capital  out  of  public  funds,  but  trusts  to 
the  enterprise  and  abilitj^  of  the  tenants  themselves  to  furnish 
it ;  so  that  the  occupier  would  be  no  better  situated  under  the 
State  than  he  would  be  under  an  embarrassed  landlord,  if  he 
enjoyed  compensation  for  his  improvements.  In  either  case 
he  would  improve  as  far  as  his  own  means  allowed,  and  he 
would  improve  no  further.  But  if  by  nationalization  of  land 
we  get  rid  of  the  embarrassed  landlord,  we  lose  at  the  same 
time  the  wealthy  one,  and  the  tenants  of  the  latter  would  be 
decidedly  worse  off  under  the  State,  which  only  drew  rents, 
but  laid  out  no  expenses.  The  community,  too,  and  the  general 
cultivation  of  the  country  would  be  greatly  the  losers.  Mr. 
George  has  probably  little  conception  of  the  amount  of  money 
an  improving  landlord  thinks  it  necessary  to  invest  in  main- 
taining or  increasing  the  productive  capacity  of  his  land.  A 
convenient  illustration  of  it  is  furnished  by  the  evidence  of  Sir 
Arnold   Kemball,  commissioner  of  the   Duke  of   Sutherland, 


The  Agrarian  Socialism  of  Henry  George.     499 

before  the  recent  Crofters'  Commission.  Sir  Arnold  gave  in 
an  abstract  of  the  revenue  and  expenditure  on  the  Sutherland 
estates  for  the  thirty  years  1853-18S2,  and  it  appears  that  the 
total  revenue  for  that  period  was  £1,039,748,  and  the  total 
expenditure  (exclusive  of  the  expenses  of  the  ducal  establish- 
ment in  Sutherland)  was  £1,285,122,  or  a  quarter  of  a  million 
more  than  the  entire  rental.  Here,  then,  is  a  dilemma  for  Mr. 
George  :  With  equally  liberal  management  of  the  land  on  the 
part  of  the  State,  how  is  he  to  endow  widows  and  pay  the  taxes 
of  the  bourgeoisie  out  of  the  rents  ?  And  without  such  liberal 
management  how  is  he  to  promote  the  spread  of  cultivation 
better  than  the  present  owners  ? 

The  production  of  food,  however,  is  only  one  of  those  uses 
of  the  land  in  which  the  public  have  a  necessary  and  growing 
interest.  They  require  sites  for  houses,  for  churches,  for 
means  of  communication,  for  a  thousand  purposes,  and  the 
landlord  often  refuses  to  grant  such  altogether,  or  charges  an 
exorbitant  price  for  the  privilege.  He  has  refused  sites  to 
churches  from  sectarian  reasons ;  for  labourers'  cottages  in 
rural  districts  for  fear  of  increasing  the  poor-rate ;  in  small 
towns  with  a  growing  trade  from  purely  sentimental  objections 
to  their  growth;  he  has  refused  rights  of  way  to  people  in 
search  of  pure  air,  for  fear  they  disturbed  his  game,  and  he 
has  enclosed  ancient  paths  and  commons  which  had  been  the 
enjoyment  of  all  from  immemorial  time.  I  do  not  speak  of  the 
ground  rent  in  large  cities  where  owners  are  numerous,  be- 
cause that,  though  a  question  of  great  magnitude,  involves 
peculiarities  that  separate  it  from  the  allied  question  of  rural 
ground-rent,  and  make  it  more  advantageously  treated  on  its 
own  basis.  But  in  country  districts  where  owners  are  few, 
and  the  possession  of  land  therefore  confers  on  one  man  power 
of  many  sorts  over  the  growth  and  comfort  of  a  whole  com- 
munity, that  power  ought  certainly  to  be  closely  controlled  by 
the  State.  Its  tyrannical  exercise  has  probably  done  more 
than  anything  else  to  excite  popular  hostility  against  land- 
lordism, and  to  lend  strength  to  the  present  crusade  for  the 
total  abolition  of  private  property  in  land.  But  here  again 
the  cure  is  far  too  drastic  for  the  disease.  What  is  needed  is 
merely  the  prevention  of  abuses  in  the  management  of  land, 


50O  Contemporary  Socialism. 

and  that  will  be  accomplished  better  by  regulations  in  the 
interest  of  the  community  than  by  any  scheme  of  complete 
nationalization.  A  sound  land  reform  must — in  this  country 
at  least — set  its  face  in  precisely  the  contrary  direction.  It 
must  aim  at  multiplying,  instead  of  extirpating,  the  private 
owners  of  land,  and  at  nursing  by  all  wise  and  legitimate 
means  the  growth  of  a  numerous  occupying  proprietary.  State 
ownership  by  itself  is  no  better  guarantee  than  private  owner- 
ship by  itself  for  the  most  productive  possible  use  of  the  land  ; 
indeed,  if  we  judge  from  the  experience  of  countries  where  it 
is  practised,  it  is  a  much  worse  one  ;  but  by  universal  consent 
the  best  and  surest  of  all  guarantees  for  the  highest  utilization 
of  the  land  is  private  ownership,  coupled  with  occupation  by 
the  owner. 


INDEX. 


A. 


Agriculture,  Russian,  291. 

Albrecht,  the  Prophet,  137. 

Alexander  II.,  Czar,  264, 2G5 ;  death, 
283. 

Alliance,  Republican  Socialist,  47. 

Amorphism,  274. 

Anabaptist  Socialism,  219. 

Anarchism,  4  ;  in  France,  47 ;  Aus- 
tria, 55 ;  Italy,  58 ;  Spain,  62  ; 
Portugal,  66 ;  Belgium,  70 ;  Hol- 
land, 73;  Switzerland,  74;  Bos- 
ton, 77,  248  ;  United  States,  80  ; 
London,  86 ;  Melbourne,  91 ;  ul- 
tra-socialistic, 249;  ultra-demo- 
cratic, 250;  ultra-revolutionary, 
255;  anti- religious,  254;  War- 
saw, 296. 

Anarchist,  The,  86. 

Anarchists,  Congress  at  Geneva, 
254. 

Applegarth,  Mr.,  320. 

Arbitration,  Papal,  245 ;  courts  of, 
431. 

Arendal  Congress,  66. 

Ashburnham,  Lord,  243. 

Austria,  Socialism  in,  54 ;  condition 
of  people  in,  56. 

Aveling,  Dr.  and  Mrs.,  on  America, 
81 ;  on  Knights  of  Labor,  84 ; 
on  Anarchists,  249. 

B. 

Babbage,  C,  26. 

Baboeuf,  C.  G.,  17,  188. 

Bakunin,  M.,  in  Italy,  57 ;  Hegelian, 
261 ;  w^ith  German  Hegelians, 
261 ;  escape,  273 ;  in  London,  274 ; 
Amorphism,  274;  Lyons  insur- 
rection, 278 ;  in  Zurich,  278. 

Bamberger,  M.,  203. 


sot 


Barton,  Mr.,  370. 

Bastiat,  M.,  297. 

Bax,  Belfort,  84. 

Baxter,  Dudley,  303. 

Beaconsfield,  Lord,  210. 

Bebel,  A.,  34 ;  on  armaments,  37 ;  1 1 , 
125. 

Becker,  B.,  108. 

Beesley,  Professor,  149. 

Beggars  in  Russia,  286. 

Belgium,  Socialism,  45,  70 ;  forests, 
412 ;  railways,  416. 

Bellamy,  E.,  79,  403,  434. 

Besant,  Mrs.,  88. 

Bismarck,  Prince,  State  Socialism, 
12 ;  Rodbertus  on,  34 ;  peasant- 
catching,  52;  right  to  labour, 
421. 

Black  Division  Party,  The,  283. 

Black  Division,  The,  292. 

Black  Hand,  The,  62. 

Blanc,  Louis,  2,  3,  95,  122;  theist, 
254. 

Blanquists,  53. 

Boeckh,  Professor,  97. 

Boehmert,  V.,  315. 

Boerenbond,  The,  245. 

Bonar,  Mr.,  quoted,  75. 

Boston  Anarchists,  77. 

Boycotting,  42. 

Birmingham,  433. 

Brassey,  Lord,  310,  3.30. 

Brentano,  Professor  L.,  on  A.  Smith, 
198 ;  on  condition  of  people,  204 ; 
working-class  claims,  213  ;  trade 
unions,  216 ;  working  class  insur- 
ance, 216. 

Brimstone  I/eague,  148. 

Brissot,  M.,  16. 

Brook  Farm,  402. 

Brousse,  M.,  50. 

Brous.sists,  51,  52. 

LL 


502 


Index. 


Buchsel,  Dr ,  239, 
Buda  Pest  Congress,  54. 
Burns,  John,  85. 
Burt,  T.,  M.P.,  86. 

C. 

Cabet,  8. 

Cairnes,  Professor,  on  Mill,  5 ;  on 
working-class  prospects,  297  ;  cost 
of  labour,  310. 

California,  435. 

Carpenter,  E.,  89. 

Castelar,  E.,  61. 

Catholic  Church  on  employer's  re- 
sponsibility, 72. 

Catholic  Socialists,  223. 

Catholic  Workmen's  Clubs,  223, 
229 ;  in  France,  243. 

Caudron,  Father,  243,  244. 

Cavour,  Count,  288. 

Chamberlain,  Rt.  Hon.  J.,  M.P., 
ransom,  385,  386 ;  overgovem- 
ment,  395. 

Channing,  W.  H.,  403. 

Chevalier,  Michel,  348. 

China,  Socialist  Clubs,  92. 

Christian  Socialism  in  England, 
87,  220 ;  Germany,  223 ;  Austria, 
242 ;  France,  243. 

Christian  Social  Association,  229. 

Christian  Social  Politics,  242. 

Church,  Primitive  Communism  of, 
237. 

Clemenceau,  M.,  47. 

Coaches,  Stage,  451. 

Cobden,  R.,  221  ;  on  Government 
intervention,  372;  on  Prussian 
Government,  393. 

Colins,  M.,  2. 

Colinsian  Socialists,  2,  72. 

Colonization,  Nihilist,  281. 

Companies,  Joint  Stock,  417. 

Communards,  46. 

Commvme,  Paris,  277;  Russian, 
259,  289. 

Communist  League,  142, 144. 

Conciliation  Courts,  35. 

Congress  at  Halle,  33,  37;  Gotha, 
88 ;  Havre,  47, 48;  Wyden,  44, 126, 
421;  Zurich,  76;  Eisenach,  202; 
D'Etienne,  50;  Buda  Pest,  54; 
Lisbon,  66 ;  Arendal,  86 ;  Stock- 
holm, 67 ;  Copenhagen,  69 ;  New- 
ark, U.S.A.,  80;  Leipzig,  103, 179; 
Geneva,  150. 

Co-operative  production,  338,  339. 


Copenhagen  Congress,  59. 
Costa,  A.,  58. 
Councils  of  Labour,  35. 
Crises,  Commercial,  323,  451. 


Dave,  v.,  86. 

Davenant,  Dr.,  303,  455. 

Davitt,  Michael,  90. 

Dawes,  Mr.,  quoted,  60. 

Day  of  labour.  Normal,  240,  434. 

Day   of   labour.   Eight   hours,  36, 

52  ;  Cardinal   Manning  on,  244  ; 

international  compulsory,  434 ;  in 

Victoria,  435  ;  California,  435. 
Death-rate,  452. 

Delitzsch.     ^ee  Schultze-Delitzsch. 
Democracy,  relation   to   socialism, 

16,18;  American  and  Continental, 

20. 
Denmark,  socialism,  67. 
Denny,  William,  315,  322. 
Distribution  of  incomes,  456. 
Dockyards,  English,  410. 
Dolgourouki,     the      revolutionist, 

274. 
Dollinger,  Dr.  von,  223. 
Donnigsen,  Helena  von,  106. 
Dynamite,  256. 

E. 

Egaux,  Conspiracy  of,  17. 

Eight    Hour    Day.      See    Day    of 

labour. 
Eisenach  Congress,  202. 
Ely,  Professor,  77,  80. 
Emancipation    of    serfs,  270,  284, 

286. 
Engel,  Dr.,  31,  203. 
Engelhardt,  Professor,  293. 
Engels,  F.,  93,  131,  142, 146. 
England,  Socialism  in,  83. 
Equality,  Love  of,  24. 
Equality  of  conditions,  385. 
Ethical  School  of  Economics,  209. 
Eudes,  General,  53. 


Fabian  Society,  88. 
Familistfere  of  Guise,  2. 
Farmer,  Small,  27,  28,  30. 
Federalism  of  C.  Mario,  178. 
Ferroti  (Schedo),  267. 
Ferroul,  M.,  52. 
Feuerbach,  Friedrich,  133. 
Feuerbach,  L.,  131, 132. 


Index. 


503 


Fleiscliinann,  M.,  42. 

Fluctuations,  Commercial,  323. 

Forbes,  Father,  243. 

Forestry,  412. 

Fourier,  23,  254. 

France,  Liberty  in,  21 ;  socialism, 

45 ;  municipal  socialism,  50. 
Franklin,  B.,  13 ;  on  high  wages,  365. 
Fraternity,  269. 
Freiligrath,  F.,  146. 
Froebel,  F.,  130. 
Frohme,  M.,  35. 
Fulda  Conference,  229. 

G. 

Gallenga,  A.,  on  unemployed  in 
Italy,  59. 

Game  Laws,  497. 

Geneva  Congress,  150. 

George,  Henr}-,  United  Labour 
Party,  78 ;  a  semi-socialist,  78 ; 
Mayoralty  of  New  York,  79 ;  in 
Australia,  90 ;  "  Progress  and 
Poverty,"  440 ;  his  problem,  445  ; 
his  explanation,  461 ;  theory  of 
population,  464 ;  of  wages,  465 ; 
profits,  474;  rent,  476;  his  remedy, 
486  ;  land  nationalization,  485. 

Germany,  Socialism  in,  33  ;  Crown 
lands  and  industries,  345. 

Giffen,  R.,  449,  452. 

Gilbert's  Act,  424. 

Glennie,  J.  S.,  34. 

Gneist,  Professor,  203. 

Goethe,  127. 

Goltz,  T.  von  der,  on  piecework,  315. 

Goschen,  Eight  Hon.  G.  J.,  State 
intervention,  346 ;  rationale  of 
Factory  Acts,  350;  distribution 
of  wealth,  460. 

Gotha  Congress,  38. 

Gotha  Programme,  38,  40. 

Graham,  Mr.  Cunninghame,  M.P., 
85. 

Greig,  George,  490. 

Greeley,  Horace,  on  socialist  com- 
munities, 402. 

Gronlund,  L.,  81. 

Guesde,  J.,  48,  50,  73. 

Guesdists,  51,  52. 


Hadlev,  Professor,  416. 

Hale,  Sir  M.,  301. 

Halle  Congress,  33,  37,  41. 


Hartraann,  E.  von,  355. 
Hasselmann,  45,  72. 
Havre  Congress,  47. 
Haxthausen,  Professor,  259,  262. 
Headlam,  Rev.  S.,  84,  88. 
Hearn,  Professor,  347. 
Hegel,  131,  261. 

Hegelians,  Young,  3,  5, 130,  139. 
Heine,  H.,    on    Lassalle,    96,    98 ; 

on  parties,  126. 
Held,  Professor,  196. 
Herder,  127. 
Hermann,  309. 
Herring  brand,  412. 
Herzen,  Alexander,  261,  262,  264, 

265 ;    letter  renoimcing    revolu- 
tionism, 273,  274. 
Herzenism,  266. 

Hildebrand,  Professor  B.,  201,  203. 
HUl,  Sir  R.,  382. 
Hime,  Dr.,  Sheffield,  quoted,  341. 
Hirsch,  Max,  203. 
Hoedel,  33. 

Holland,  Socialism  in,  72. 
House    Communities     of    Russia, 

Dissolution  of,  289. 
Housing  of  poor,  in  Sheffield,  841; 

McCulloch's  view,  367. 
Howell,  G.,  M.P.,    on    piecework, 

315. 
Hughes,  Thomas,  222. 
Humboldt,  A.  von.,  98,  102. 
Humboldt,  W.  von.,  on    freedom, 

334 ;  on  marriage,  353  ;  on  energy, 

396. 
Humphreys,  Mr.,  482. 
Hyndman,  H.  M.,  84. 

I. 

Icarians,  2,  77. 

"  niegal  Men,"  257. 

Incomes,  Distribution  of,  486. 

Increment,  Unearned,  488. 

Ingram,  Dr.  J.  K.,  371. 

Insurance,  National,  423;  in  New 
Zealand,  417. 

International  Working  Men's  Asso- 
ciation in  France,  46  ;  Italj*,  57 ; 
Spain,  60,  62  ;  Denmark,  68 ;  Bel- 
gium, 70 ;  Holland,  70 ;  Jurassian 
Federation,  73  ;  origin,  147 ;  Paris 
Commune,  152  ;  disruption,  153 ; 
in  Russia,  276. 

International  Working  People's 
Association,  U.S.A.,  80. 

Intemationality,  126. 


504 


Index. 


Ireland,  Poor  Law,  385. 

Irish  labour,  365. 

"Iron  and  Cruel  Law,"  view    of 

Lassalle,  121;    of  Ketteler,  226; 

of  Todt,  237  :  refuted,  300. 
Italy,  Socialism  in,  57. 

J. 

Jacobites,  126. 

Janson,  Professor,  pauperism  in  St. 

Petersburg,  284. 
Jevons,     Professor    W.     Stanley, 

commercial  statistics,  327. 
Jews  become  Nihilists.  271,  296. 
Jurassian  Federation,  73,  250. 
Justice,  S4. 

K. 

Karakasoff's  attempt,  276. 

Kemball,  Sir  Arnold,  495. 

Ketteler,  Bishop,  224;  iron  and 
cruel  law,  226  ;  right  of  property, 
227 ;  part  of  Church  in  Social 
Question,  228. 

Kildonan  Strath  improvements, 
490. 

King,  Gregory,  occupiers  of  land, 
29 ;  classes  of  population,  301 ; 
distribution  of  wealth,  3(B ;  rent 
of  land,  454. 

Kingsley,  Charles,  221. 

Knies,  Professor,  201. 

Knights  of  Labor,  82. 

Koegel,  Dr.,  139. 

KOlping,  Father,  223. 

Koscheleff,  267. 

Krapotkin,  Prince,  45 ;  Lyons  an- 
archist, 48;  English  anarchism, 
86 ;  housing  the  poor,  250 ;  the 
Municipal  Councils,  252 ;  painter, 
280. 


Labour,  Cost  of.  in  different  coun- 
tries, 310. 

Labour  Department  of  State,  35. 

Labour  Emancipation  League  of 
Russia,  295. 

Labouring  class  prospects,  297,  312. 

Labour,  Knights  of,  82. 

Labour  Party  of  Belgium,  71. 

Labour  Statistical  Bureaux,  326. 

Laf argue,  P.,  52. 

"  Land  and  Liberty  "  Society,  283. 

Land,  diminishing  return,  467  ;  an 


artificial  product,  489 ;  Mill  on, 
491 ;  speculation  in,  493  ;  reform, 
496. 

Landmetzger,  484. 

Liand  Nationalization  in  Belgium, 
72 ;  in  England,  89. 

Land  Restoration  League,  90. 

Laing,  Samuel,  411. 

Laisant,  M.,  64. 

Laissez-faire^  336,  352 ;  repudiated 
by  McCuUoch,  361 ;  never  adopted 
in  England,  373;  and  property, 
394. 

Lange,  F.  A.,  216. 

Laveleye,E.de,  on  Italian  peasantry, 
59;  no  revolutionary  Metropolis 
in  Italy,  60 ;  Spanish  socialist 
clubs,  61 ;  the  Portuguese,  65 ;  the 
Scandinavians,  67;  Belgian  so- 
cialism, 71 ;  State  Socialism  in 
England,  346;  professes  State 
Socialism,  384. 

Lavergne,  M.  de,  on  French  and 
English  rural  population,  46. 

Lavrists,  280. 

Lavroff,  P.,  278 ;  his  principles,  279 ; 
followers,  295. 

Lassalle,  F.,  92;  Heine,  96;  cha- 
racter, 96 ;  epitaph,  97  ;  a  revolu- 
tion, 97  ;  Humboldt,  98 ;  Countess 
Hatzfeldt's  defence,  99 ;  theft 
of  cassette,  100;  conviction  for 
treason,  101 ;  literary  work,  102 ; 
"  Working  Men's  Programme," 
103 ;  summary  of,  109 ;  General 
"Working  Men's  Association,  105 ; 
progress  of  propaganda,  105; 
Helena  von  D6nnigsen,10(j;  death, 
108 ;  apotheosis,  108 ;  reply  to 
Schultze-Delitzsch,  114  ;  new  so- 
cialistic constitution  of  property, 
116;  anarchic  socialism  of  exist- 
ing regime,  117;  Ricardo's  doc- 
trine of  value,  119 ;  '•  iron  and 
cruel  law,"  121 ;  productive 
societies,  122 ;  a  national  socialist, 
124 ;  letter  to  Feuerbach,  172 ; 
on  the  modem  economists,  201 ; 
popularity  in  Russia,  277 ;  on 
increase  of  production,  336. 

Le  Basse,  Father,  243. 

Ledru-Rollin,  quoted,  22. 

Leipzig  Congress,  103,  179. 

Leo  Xni.,  243 ;  encyclical,  245. 

Le  Play,  284. 

Leroux,  P.,  3. 

Leroy-Beaulieu,  Paul,  219. 


hidex. 


505 


Lessing,  127. 

Levi,  Professor  Leone,  304. 

Liberalism,  Mario  on,  185. 

Liberty  in  America,  20  ;  in  France, 
21 ;  under  democracy,  24. 

Lichtenstein,  Prince,  243. 

Liebknecht,  W.,  34 ;  on  revolution, 
42 ;  peasant  catching, 42 ;  religion, 
42 ;  future  socialist  State,  43 ; 
expulsion  from  General  Working 
Men's  Association  of  Germany, 
125;  foundation  of  Social  Demo- 
cratic Labour  Party,  125  ;  speech 
at  Leipzig,  249. 

Liege,  Congress,  243. 

Lilyenkrantz,  Jacquette,  69. 

Limitation  of  production,  313. 

Limousin,  M.,  minimum  of  social- 
ism, 14. 

Lisbon  Congress,  66. 

Locke,  John,  353. 

London,  death-rate,  302. 

Ludlow,  Edmund,  127. 

Ludlow,  J.  M.,  221. 

M. 

Mably,  161. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  quoted,  214. 

Macdonald,  Mr.,  Owenite,  403. 

Machiavelli,  secret  societies,  257. 

Malet,  Mr.,  45. 

Malikowsv,  280. 

Mai  thus,  T.  E.,  369,  421. 

Malthusianism,  17. 

Manchester  Party  of  Germany,  201, 
212. 

Manchester  School,  view  of  Maurice, 
221 ;  of  Kingsley,  221 ;  of  Todt, 
235 ;  their  real  doctrine,  372. 

Manning,  Cardinal,  Lifege  letter, 
244. 

Marlboro'  Association,  405. 

Mario,  Carl,  178. 

Marr,  W.,  136,  137. 

Marshall,  Professor  A.,  437. 

Martensen,  Bishop,  Catholicism  and 
socialism,  233. 

Marx,  Karl,  historical  necessity  of 
socialism,  23 ;  social  revolution 
impossible  without  English  par- 
ticipation, 83 ;  despair  of  English 
participation,  84;  reception  of 
Das  Kapital,  127  ;  life,  129 ;  Young 
Hegelian,  130 ;  early  views,  139  ; 
Communist  League,  142;  com- 
mvudst    manifesto,    144 ;     Inter- 


national, 149 ;  inaugural  address 
to,  151 ;  summary  of  Das 
Kapital,  156;  value,  160;  wages 
161 ;  normal  workday,  161 
machinery,  170;  piecework,  172 
over-population,  174  ;  letter  from 
Proudhon,  255 ;  popularity  in 
Eussia,  277. 

Massachusetts,  Joint  Stock  manage- 
ment in,  417. 

Maurice,  F.  D.,  11,  221. 

McCuUoch,  J.  E., disciple  of  Eicardo, 
360;  Wages  fund,  360;  laissez- 
faire,  361 ;  State  management, 
362 ;  factory  sj'stem,  363  ;  pauper 
labour,  364 ;  factory  legislation, 
366 ;  housing  the  poor,  366  ;  poor 
law,  368;  agricultural  produce, 
456. 

"Medalmen,"294. 

Meeker,  Mr.,  Fourierist,  408. 

Melbourne  anarchists,  91. 

Menger,  Prof.  A.,  historical  neces- 
sity of  socialism,  23. 

Meyer,  Eudolph,  242,  388. 

Michel,  Louise,  48. 

Mill,  James,  360. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  profession  of  so- 
cialism, 5 ;  liberty,  334  ;  province 
of  Government,  353 ;  over-govern- 
ment in  democracy,  395 ;  in- 
dustrial habits  under  socialism, 
404 ;  unearned  inci-ement,  488 ; 
land,  472. 

Ministry  of  Labour,  35. 

Mint,  The,  412. 

Mir,  The,  252,  262. 

Molinari,  G.  de,  3,  45. 

Montefiore,  L.,  97. 

Morelly,  16. 

Morier,  Sir  E.,  288. 

Morris,  William,  84,  85. 

Most,  John,  44,  80,  248. 

Moufang,  Canon,  230,  231. 

Mulhall,  M.,  wages,  308;  textile 
workers,  323 ;  agricultural  rent, 
456. 

Mun,  Count  A,  de,  243. 

Municipal  management,  413. 

Municipal  socialism  in  France,  51. 

Mutualists,  3. 

N. 

Napoleon  I.,  880, 

Nasmyth,  James,  manual  dexterity, 
317,  440. 


5o6 


Index. 


Nasse,  Professor  E,,  economic  in- 
dividualism in  England,  346. 

Neale,  E.  Vansittart,  87. 

Netchaieff,  276. 

Newark  Congress,  80. 

New  Zealand,  State  insurance,  348. 

Nicholas,  Czar,  263,  264. 

Niewenhuis,  D.,  72. 

Nihilism,  Kussian,  45,  259;  name, 
266. 

Nobiling,  33. 

No  Man's  land,  482. 

NordhoflP,  Mr.,  403. 

North  American  Phalanx,  408. 

Norway,  Socialism  in,  66 ;  the  poor, 
452. 

Noyes,  Mr.,  4(B. 


Oldham,  co-operative  mills,  338. 
Old  Believers,  292. 
Oppenheim,  M.,  195. 
Overtime,  320. 
Owen,  R.  D.,  405. 
Owen,  Eobert,  77,  360. 
Owenites,  2, 11, 77, 148 ;  in  America, 
404. 

P. 

Palm,  67. 

Pan-destruction,  274. 

Parsons,  249. 

Patriotism,  disparaged  by  socialists, 
126  ;  by  great  writers,  127. 

Paul,  St.,  slave  emancipation,  242. 

Pauperism,  St.  Petersburg,  260; 
aged,  423;  England,  449;  able- 
bodied,  450 ;  Norway,  452. 

Peasant  proprietary,  prospects,  27  ; 
in  the  International,  46. 

Peasants'  Iteague  in  Belgium,  245. 

Pensions,  National,  423. 

Perowskaia,  Sophia,  280. 

Pestel,  264. 

Peukert,  55. 

Piecework,  314. 

Pio,  68. 

Poles,  The,  271. 

Poor  Law,  England,  402;  McCul- 
loch,  368 ;  S.  Webb,  423. 

Population  theory,  464. 

Porter,  G.  R.,  good  wages  and 
temperance,  318;  working  class 
houses  in  Sheffield,  341. 

Portugal,  Socialism  in,  65. 

Possibilists,  50,  51. 


Post-office  management,  410. 
Potter,  George,  piecework,  320. 
Production,  Limitation  of,  313. 
Productive  associations,  79. 
Profit-sharing,  339. 
Propaganda  of  Deed,  256. 
Property,  diffusion,  23  ;  advantages 

of  institution,  333. 
Proudhon,  anarchy,   250  ;  letter  to 

Marx,  255  ;  pauperism,  475. 
Prussia,  socialism,  31 ;  condition  of 

people,  31 ;   occupation  of  land, 

32 ;  forests,  42. 

R. 

Railways,  State,  416. 

Rappists,  405. 

Realistic  School  of  Economics,  205. 

Reclus,  Elisee,  anarchist,  48 ;  on 
Russian  agriculture,  290. 

Renan,  E.,  384. 

Rent,  Fair,  429 ;  agricultural,  456 ; 
H.  George,  476. 

Republican  Socialist  Alliance  in 
France,  54. 

Revolutionist,  The  complete,  275, 

Reybaud,  M.,  179. 

Ricardo,  D.,law  of  value,  226;  "iron 
law  of  wages,"  300;  real  theory 
of  wages,  306 ;  province  of  Go- 
vernment, 359 ;  National  Bank, 
360;  working  class  annuities,  360; 
rent,  477. 

Right  to  existence,  421. 

Right  to  labour,  in  Convention  of 
1793,  22 ;  Bismarck  on,  421 ;  in 
English  Poor  Law,  424, 

Rights,  Natural,  420;  Primitive 
economic,  385. 

Rodbertus  on  Bismarck's  social 
policy,  34 ;  differences  from  Las- 
salle,  123 ;  social  question,  127 ; 
relation  to  socialist  movement, 
178;  converts  Wagner,  380;  ac- 
knowledges Hohenzollerns,  381 ; 
views,  381. 

Rodriguez  de  Capada,  Professor, 
245. 

Rogers,  Professor  Thorold,  350. 

Roscher,  Professor  W.,  time  as  re- 
former, 199;  historical  method, 
200,204 ;  Eisenach  Congress,  203 ; 
economic  ideal,  205 ;  task  as  eco- 
nomist, 207;  piecework,  321. 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  16. 

Ruge,  Arnold,  131. 


Index. 


507 


Euskin,  John,  88. 
Russia,  Nihilism  in,  259. 
Russo- Turkish  war,  282. 


St.  Etienne  Congress,  50. 

St.  Joseph  associations,  229. 

St.  Petersburg  pauperism,  260. 

St.  Simon,  218,  254. 

Samoa,  Socialist  customs  in, 401, 492. 

Samter,  V.,  on  Mill,  198. 

Sassulitch,  Vera,  277,  282. 

Sav,  Leon,  State  Socialism,  345. 

Schseffle.  Professor,  326. 

Scheel,  Professor  von.,  social  ques- 
tion, 215. 

SchmoUer,  Professor,  195 ;  on  So- 
cialists of  Chair,  200;  Eisenach 
Congress,  203;  Province  of  Govern- 
ment, 211 ;  distributive  justice, 
213. 

Schonberg,  Professor,  203,  213. 

Schorlemer-Abst,  Baron,  229. 

Schulte,  Professor,  229. 

Schultze-Delitzsch,  4 ;  co-operative 
societies,  103;  Lassalle's  reply, 
114. 

Schweitzer,  Dr.  von,  124. 

Self-interest,  375. 

Senior,  N.  W.,  464. 

Shakers,  405. 

Shaw,  G.,  Bernard,  88. 

SheflSeld,  socialists,  89 ;  housing  of 
working-class,  341. 

Shuttleworth,  Canon,  88. 

Sidgwick,  Professor,  360,  428. 

Sinclair,  Sir  John,  469. 

Sisj'phism,  443. 

Smith,  Adam,  as  viewed  by  Social- 
ists of  the  Chair,  198;  on  Govern- 
ment trading,  345;  his  theory 
of  social  politics,  353;  national 
education,  354 ;  military'  training, 
355 ;  English  Government  man-  I 
agement,  356 ;  truck,  357 ;  usury,  I 
357  ;  corporate  management,  417. 

Smith,  E.  Peshine,  effect  of  educa- 
tion on  wages,  321. 

Social  Democratic  Party  in  Ger- 
many, 33 ;  in  Reichstag,  34 ; 
France,  48;  programme,  49;  Italy, 
68 ;  Spain,  61  ;  Xorway,  66 ;  Den- 
mark, 69  ;  Belgium,  70 ;  Holland, 
73  ;  Switzerland,  74 ;  U.S.A.,  80 ; 
England,  84 ;  Scotland,  90 ;  Syd- 
ney, 91. 

Social  Monarchical  Union,  241. 


Social  Politics,  English  theory,  873 ; 
Christian,  242. 

Social  Reform,  Central  Union  for, 
239. 

Socialism,  before  1848,  2  ;  contem- 
porary', 3;  labourers'  claim  of 
right,  7  ;  variable  use  of  word,  8 ; 
inequitableness  its  ruling  cha- 
racteristic, 9;  old  and  new,  10; 
minimum  of,  14 ;  relation  to  de- 
mocracy, 16  ;  Christian,  224  ; 
State,  345 ;  meanings  of  word,374. 

Socialist  Laws  of  Germany,  33. 

Socialists  of  the  Chair,  195. 

Society  of  Public  Utility  in  Switzer- 
land, 76. 

Society  of  Social  Peace,  243. 

Spain,  Socialism  in,  60 ;  anarchism, 
62 ;  condition  of  people,  64. 

Spectator,  The,  testamentary  sta- 
tistics, 459. 

Speculation,  493. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  believes  in  social- 
ist ideal  of  society,  8 ;  the  coming 
slavery,  346;  functions  of  Govern- 
ment, 351,  352;  land  nationali- 
zation, 385 ;  natural  rights,  420. 

Stahl,  quoted,  16. 

State  management,  409. 

State  railways,  415. 

State  Socialism,  345;  in  Germany, 
379. 

State,  The,  211. 

Statistics,  Commercial,  326. 

Stein,  Professor  L.  von,  94,  132. 

Stephanovitcb,  293. 

Stepniak,  on  mir,  252 ;  Paris  Com- 
mune, 277 ;  Russian  proletariat, 
284 ;  Russian  peasantry,  285,  286, 
288;  break-up  of  the  Russian 
Commune,  289 ;  Russian  agri- 
culture, 291. 

Stacker,  Dr.,  234,  236,  241,  242. 

Stockholm  Congress,  67. 

Strachey,  Mr.,  68. 

Strikes,  44 

Studnitz,  A.,  320,  331. 

Suez  Canal,  348. 

Sumner,  Archbishop,  370. 

Sunday  Schools,  Nihilist,  269,  272. 

Surplus  Value,  Marx's  doctrine,  167. 

Sweating  System,  432. 

Sweden,  Socialism  in,  66. 

Switzerland,  Socialism  in,  73 ;  So- 
ciety of  Public  Utility,  76  ;  secret 
societies,  136. 

Sylvania  Association,  404. 


5o8 


Index. 


T. 

Taylor,  Helen,  84. 

Tchaikowsky,  280. 

Tchernychetfsky,  269,  272. 

Telegraphs,  State  management  of, 
410. 

Thompson,  William,  anticipation 
of  Marx's  doctrine,  148. 

Thornton,  W.  T.,  464. 

Thuenen,  J.  von,  natural  wages, 
121. 

Thun,  Professor  A.,  278,  281,  284, 
285,  287. 

Tocqueville,  A.  de,  socialism  and 
democracy,  19 ;  democratic  pas- 
sion for  equality,  24 ;  middle- 
class  materialization,  24;  political 
necessity  of  religion,  25 ;  the 
plutocracy,  186. 

Todt,  R.,  234. 

Trade  Unions,  311. 

Tramps,  450. 

Treitschke,  H.,  203. 

Trepoff,  Assassination  of  General, 

Triafof  the,  193,  280. 
Troglodytes,  Secret  Society,  283. 
Trumbull  Phalanx,  404. 
Tucker,  B.  R.,  91. 
TurgeniefE,  266. 
Turner,  Dr.,  Samoa,  401,  492. 

U. 

Unemployed,  424. 
Unionism,  The  New,  85,  86. 
United    States,    Liberty    in,    20; 

socialism,  77  ;    nationalism,  79 ; 

anarchism,  80. 

V. 

Vaillant,  M.,  58. 

Value,  Marx's  doctrine,  160;  true 

theory,  327. 
"  Versaillais,"  The,  126. 


Victoria,  State  railways,  411,417; 

eight  hours  day,  436. 
Volmar,  Herr  von,  35. 
Vogt,  K.,  148. 

W. 

Wages  Fund,  464,  465. 

Wages,  "  iron  law,"  226,  237,  300 ; 
rise  since  English  Revolution, 
301;  Ricardo's  theory,  306;  true 
theory,  307 ;  fair,  430 ;  minimum, 
431. 

Wagner,  Professor  A.,  ground- 
rents,  199,  State  and  the  social 
question,  213  :  Evangelical  Social 
Congress,  241 ;  converted  by  Rod- 
bertus,  380 ;  his  State  Socialism, 
387. 

Walker,  President  F.  A.,  332,  469. 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  89,  485. 

Warren,  Josiah,  77. 

Watts,  Dr.  J.,  434. 

Webb,  Sidney,  88;  State  pensions 
for  the  aged,  423. 

Weitling,  W.,  80, 137. 

Westminster,  Duke  of,  486. 

Wieland  127. 

Will  of  the  People  Party,  283,  295. 

Winchester,  Bishop  of,  definition 
of  socialism.  376. 

Winkelblech,  Professor,  180. 

Woeste,  M.,  244. 

Working  classes,  prospects,  297, 
312 ;  habits,  318 ;  legitimate  aspi- 
rations, 333. 

Workmen's  Chambers,  35. 

Wyden  Congress,  44,  126. 

Y. 

Yellow  Springs,  404. 
Young,  Arthur,  455. 
Young  England  Party,  380. 

Z. 

Zurich  Congress,  76. 


Opinions  of  the  Press  ox  the  First  Edition. 

"  A  WORK  of  commanding  ability  and  great  practical  value.  It  deserves 
to  be  studied  by  everybody  wbo  wishes  to  understand  a  series  of  ques- 
tions w^hich  are  just  now  attracting  a  large  share  of  attention.  .  .  . 
.A.dmirabl3'  adapted  to  dissipate  erroneous  impressions  on  the  subject." — 
Scotsman. 

'■  The  reader  will  find  much  to  interest  him  in  Mr.  Eae's  volume.  His 
introductory  chapter  is  well  worth  studying,  as  are  also  his  sketches  of 
Lassalle,  Karl  Marx,  and  Professor  Winkelblech." — Times. 

"  Mr.  Eae  has  made  a  special  study  of  the  various  phases  of  Continental 
socialism,  and  has  therefore  peculiar  qualifications  for  this  part  of  his 
task.  .  .  ,  With  a  special  recommendation  of  the  last  chapter,  we 
take  leave  of  a  useful  and  ably  written  book." — Saturday  Review. 

"Mr.  John  Eae  has  already  won  his  spurs  as  a  writer  on  socialism. 
The  book  on  that  subject  which  he  has  just  published  is  the  best  of  its 
kind,  in  English  at  least,  that  we  have  seen.  Holding  an  intermediate 
position  between  the  socialists  and  the  Manchester  School,  Mr.  Eae  has 
just  that  amount  of  sj'^mpathy  with  the  aims  of  the  socialists  which 
enables  him  to  look  at  the  problems  involved  from  their  point  of  view, 
and  thus  to  meet  their  errors  fully  and  directly  while  doing  justice  to 
them  in  some  respects  in  which  hitherto  they  have  hardly  received  it." — 
Westminster  Review. 

"  In  Mr.  Eae's  interesting  volume  full  information  will  be  found 
respecting  the  leaders  of  the  socialistic  movement  in  Europe,  and  a  clear 
statement  of  their  teaching." — Literary  World. 

"  A  verj"-  admirable  piece  of  work,  displaying  thorough  research  in  the 
presentation  of  the  various  forms  of  socialistic  theory,  keen  discrimina- 
tion in  their  analysis,  and  a  masterly  comprehension  of  the  whole 
economic  situation.  Mr.  Eae's  essay  on  Nihilism  is  as  good  as  anything 
that  we  have  seen  on  this  mysterious  subject,  but  there  are  few  persons 
who  are  interested  in  the  history  of  the  present  century  that  will  not  be 
glad  to  read  the  whole  book,  and  some  parts  of  it  more  than  once.  We 
will  only  add  that  the  analysis  of  Mr.  Henry  George's  theories  is 
extremely  well  done.  It  undermines  the  very  foundations  on  which  Mr, 
George's  structure  is  built,  and  the  whole  fabric  dissolves  before  our 
eyes." — Evening  Post  (New  York). 

"  These  studies  attracted  much  attention  when  they  first  appeared,  and 
readers  will  be  glad  to  meet  them  again  in  this  book.  A  short  analysis 
could  not  do  justice  to  Mr.  Eae's  work.  What  characterizes  the  work 
most,  is  the  impression  derived  from  it  as  a  whole;  it  is  the  conscientious- 
ness and  sincerity  with  which  the  author  has  studied  the  writers  he 
discusses.  The  judgments  he  pronounces  are  his  own.  Those  who  wish, 
if  not  a  new,  yet  a  more  enlarged  idea  of  the  principle  socialistic  theories, 
will  find  pleasure  in  following  the  effect  which  they  produce  on  an 
enlightened  mind,  the  remarks  they  suggest  to  him,  and  the  objections  he 
makes  to  them." — Journal  des  Economistes  (Paris), 

"  It  is  the  best  English  text-book  on  the  important  subject  of  which  it 
treats,  and  like  all  good  text-books,  it  whets  the  reader's  appetite," — 
Glasgow  Herald. 


POLITICAL    SCIENCE    AND 
ECONOMY. 


►OLITICAL  SCIENCE;  Or,  The  State  Theoretically  and  Practl* 
cally  Considered.  By  THEODORE  D.  WOOLSEY,  D.D^ 
LL.D.j  late  President  of  Yale  College.    2  vols.,  8vo,  $5.00, 

THE  BOSTON  TRANSCRIPT.— "No  work  f>E  Political  Science  has  ever  been 
|)nbll8lied  In  America  which  covers  so  wide  »  ground  and  which  treats  the  sub- 
ject 80  fairly  and  impartially,  and  with  so  thoromjh  knowledge  and  judgment." 

THE  CINCINNATI  GAZETTE.— " This  work  Is  Indeed  one  of  the  most  im 
portant  contrlbntlons  of  the  century  to  the  science  of  natural  and  national  law  ana 
ethics." 

THE  N.  Y.  TRIBUNE.—"  In  the  discussion  of  the  marlfold  questions  suggested 
by  the  general  theme  of  the  work  Dr.  Woolsey  exhibits  ^ho  same  cautiousness  of 
judgment,  moderation  of  tone,  and  vigor  of  expreaelon  vhlch  characterize  his 
previous  writings.  His  volumes  abound  with  the  slgna  of  profound  study  and 
copious  erudition  as  well  as  of  original  thought." 


INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  LAW. 

Designed  as  an  Aid  in  Teaching  and  in  HUtorical  Studies. 
By  THEODORE  D.  WOOLSEY,  D.D.,  LL.D-,  late  President 
of  Yale  College.  Fifth  edition,  revised  and  enlarged.  Crown 
8vo,  $2.50. 

A  complete  outline  of  that  grand  system  of  etliical  j*\riflpnidenco 
which  holds,  as  it  were,  in  one  community  the  nation.'^  of  Christendom. 
Its  appendix  contains  a  most  useful  list  of  the  principal  treaties  since 
the  Reformation.     The  work  has  no  rival  as  a  text  book. 

Special  attention  Is  directed  to  the  fact  that  this  FIFTH  EDrnoN  of  I*. 
Woolsey's  International  Law  is  entirely  re-wrltten  and  enlarged,  and  I"*  printed 
from  new  plates. 

THE  ST.  LOUIS  REPUBLICAN.— "A  compendium  treatise.  Intended  not  for 
lawyers  nor  for  those  having  the  profession  of  law  in  view,  but  for  young  men  who 
are  cultivating  themselves  by  the  study  of  lilstorlcal  and  political  Science.  While 
ftie  work  gives  the  state  of  the  law  of  nations  as  It  is,  It  compares  the  actual  la'v 
ivith  the  standard  of  justice,  and,  by  exhibiting  the  progress  of  science  In  r. 
bistorical  way,  brings  It  Into  connectloa  with  the  advances  of  humaDitj  »Mt 
HviUzation."  > 


STANDARD   TEXT  BOOKS. 


POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  By  ARTHUR  LATHAM  PERRY,  Pro- 
fessor of  History  and  Political  Economy  in  Williams  College. 
Crown  8vo,  $2.50. 

Professor  Perry's  book  has  passed  throngh  many  editions  and  has 
recently  been  subjected  to  a  thorough  revision  and  recasting.  Hia 
work  is  a  complete  exposition  of  the  Science  of  Political  Economy  both 
historically  and  topically,  his  style  is  admirably  clear  and  racy  ;  his 
illustrations  are  forcible  and  well  chosen,  and  he  has  made  a  subject 
interesting  and  open  to  the  comprehension  of  any  diligent  student, 
which  has  often  been  left  by  writers  vague  and  befogged  and  bewilder- 
ing. This  work  has  stood  excellently  the  test  of  the  class  room,  and 
has  been  adopted  by  many  of  the  chief  educational  institutions  in  this 
country.  Among  them  are  Yale  College.  Bowdoin  College,  Dartmouth, 
Trinity,  Wesleyan,  University  of  Wooster,  Denisou  University, 
Rutgers  College,  New  York  University,  Union  College,  and  many  other 
colleges  and  normal  and  high  schools. 

T.  D.  WOOLSEY,  President  of  Tale  Conege.—"  Your  book  Interests  students 
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THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES.— "As  a  manual  for  general  reading  and  popular 
Instruction,  Prof.  Perry's  book  is  far  superior  to  any  work  on  the  subject  before 
Issued  In  the  United  States." 

THE  NATION.— "We  cordially  recommend  this  book  to  all,  of  whatever  school 
of  political  economy,  who  enjoy  candid  stat«ment  and  full  and  logical  discussion-'' 

THE  INDEPENDENT.—"  There  Is  more  common  sense  In  this  book  than  In  any 
of  the  more  elaborate  works  on  the  same  subject  that  have  preceded  It.  It  is  the 
most  Interesting  and  valuable  one  that  has  been  given  to  the  American  public  oa 
this  important  subject.'' 

INTRODUCTION  TO  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  By  ARTHUR 
LATHAM  PERRY,  Professor  of  History  and  Political  Econ- 
omy in  Williams  College.    Revised  edition.    12mOf  $1.50. 

FROM  THE  PREFACE.— "I  have  endeavored  In  this  book  so  to  lay  the  founda- 
tions of  Political  Economy  in  their  whole  circuit,  that  they  will  never  need  to  be 
disturbed  afterwards  by  persons  rosortlng  to  it  for  their  early  instruction,  how- 
ever long  and  however  far  these  persons  may  pursue  their  studies  in  this  science." 

THE  N.  Y.  EVENING  POST.— "This  work  Is  not  meant  In  any  way  to  take 
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nature  of  the  case,  that  work  cannot  occupy.  It  Is  net  an  abridgment  of  that 
work  but  a  separate  treatise.  Intended  primarily  for  the  use  of  students  and 
readers  whose  time  for  study  Is  small,  but  who  wish  to  learn  the  broad  principles 
of  the  science  thoroughly  and  >well,  especially  with  reference  to  the  scientlflo 
princlplea  which  are  Involved  In  the  practical  discussions  of  our  time.  •  •  •  We 
need  scarcely  add,  with  respect  to  a  writer  so  well  known  as  he,  that  his  thinking 
Is  sound  as  well  as  acute,  or  that  his  doctrines  are  those  which  the  greatest 
kiasters  of  political  science  have  approve^.'' 


CHARLES  SCRIBNERS  SONS' 


AMERICAN  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  By  FRANCIS  BOWEN, 
Professor  of  Natural  Religion  and  Moral  Philosophy  in 
Harvard  College.    8vo,  $2.50. 

This  treatise  presents  views  compatible  with  the  idea  that  ' '  every 
country  has  a  political  economy  of  its  own,  suitable  to  its  own  physical 
circumstances  of  position  on  the  globe,  and  to  the  character,  iabits, 
and  institutions  of  the  people." 

THE  PHILADELPHIA  AGE.— "If  our  members  of  Congress  would  vote  them- 
selves a  copy  of  this  book,  and  read  It,  fewer  wild  schemes  would  be  coneocted 
by  them,  and  a  great  saving  of  time  and  the  people's  money  would  be  secured." 

THE  SPRINGFIELD  REPUBLICAN.— "His  arguments  are  worth  considering, 
fcud  his  whole  book  is  of  high  value  to  any  American  to  study  economical  ques* 
tions." 


CONTEMPORARY  SOCIALISM.     By  JOHN  RAE,  M.A. 
8vo,  $2.50. 

Such  a  book  as  this  which  Mr.  Rae  has  written — a  thorough  history 
Und  analysis  by  a  man  of  singularly  candid  and  liberal  mind,  equally 
without  prejudice  and  fanaticism — has  long  been  needed  and  earnestly 
wished  for  by  every  student  of  socialism,  and  in  all  countries. 

THE  LONDON  SATURDAY  REVIEW.— "A  useful  and  ably  T?fltten  book." 

THE  CONGREGATIONALIST.— "No  subject  more  needs  fiorough  and  Im- 
partial discussion  at  present  than  this,  and  the  work  before  us  by  John  Rae  is  em- 
inently able  and  helpful.  It  Is  distinguished  in  a  remarkable  degree  by  breadth  of 
view  and  the  grasp  of  underlying  and  widely  reaching  principles,  and  also  by  his 
minuteness  of  detail  and  the  careful  relation  oC  facts  and  figures  in  support  of  its 
position." 

COMMUNISM  AND  SOCIALISM,  In  their  History  and  Theory. 
A  Sketch.  By  THEODORE  D.  WOOLSEY,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
late  President  of  Yale  College.    12mo,  $1.50. 

This  book  is  the  only  comprehensive  review  of  its  subject,  within 
small  compass,  yet  exactly  meeting  the  needs  of  the  reader,  that  is  ac- 
cessible in  English.  The  candor  of  the  discussion  is  remarkable  ;  the 
book  is  the  argument  of  a  perfectly  fair  reasoner,  painting  nothing  Id 
too  dark  colors,  but  taking  his  opponents  at  their  best. 

THE  N.  Y.  COMMERCIAL  ADVERTISER.— "The  work  Is  an  epitome  of  the 
kistory  of  the  socialistic  and  communistic  movement,  and  will  prove  a  most  vain* 
ible  text  book  to  all  who  have  not  made  themselves  familiar  with  this  gxed 
^abject" 


CHARLES   SCEIBNER'S   SONS' 


AX  ADDITION  TO  TBEODOR  MOMMSEITS  BISTORT  OF  ROMB. 

THE  PROVINCES  OF  THE  ROMAN  EMPIRE.  From  Caesar  t« 
Diocletian.  By  THEODOR  MOMMSEN.  Translated  wit/ 
the  author's  sanction  and  additions,  by  William  P.  Dickson, 
D.D.,  LL.D.  With  ten  maps,  by  Professor  Kiepert.  2  vols., 
8vo,  $6.00. 

Contents:  The  Northern  Frontier  of  Italy — Spain — The  Gallic 
Provinces — Roman  Germany  and  the  Frei,  Germans — Britain — The 
Danubian  Lands  and  the  Wars  on  the  Danube — Greek  Europe — Asia 
Minor — The  Euphrates  Frontier  and  the  Parthians— Syria  and  the 
Land  of  the  Nabatseans — Judea  and  the  Jews — Egypt — The  African 
Provinces. 

N.  Y.  SUN.—"  Prolessor  Mommsen's  work  goes  further  tthan  any  other  ex- 
tant, or  now  looked  for,  to  provide  as  with  a  key  to  the  mediaeval  history  of  the 
Mediterranean  world." 

PROF.  W.  A.  PACKARD,  in  Presbyterian  Reviem.— "The  author  draws  the 
wonderfully  rich  and  varied  picture  of  the  conquest  and  administration  of  that 
great  circle  of  peoples  and  lands  which  formed  the  empire  of  Rome  outside  of 
Italy,  their  agriculture,  trade,  and  manufactures,  their  artistic  and  scientiflc  life, 
through  all  degrees  of  civilization,  with  such  detail  and  completeness  as  could 
Aave  come  from  no  other  hand  than  that  of  this  great  master  of  historical  research 
In  all  its  departments,  guided  by  that  gift  of  historical  imaginatloa,  for  which  he 
is  equally  eminent " 

THE  HISTORY  OF  GREECE.    By  Prof.  Dr.  ERNST  CURTIUS. 

Translated  by  Adolphus  William  Ward,  M.  A.,  Fellow  of  St. 
Peter's  College,  Cambridge,  Prof,  of  History  in  Owen's  Col- 
lege, Manchester.  Uniform  with  Mommsen's  History  of 
Rome.  Five  volumes,  crown  8vo,  gilt  top.  Price  per  set, 
810.00. 

LONDON  ATHENitUM.— "Professor  Cnrtius' eminent  scholarship  ia  a  snffl- 
elent  guarantee  for  the  trustworthiness  of  Ills  history,  while  thj  skill  with  which 
^e  groups  his  facts,  and  his  effective  mode  of  narrating  them,  combine  to  render 
It  no  less  readable  than  sound.  Prof.  Curtius  everywhere  maintains  the  true 
tlgnity  and  impartiality  of  history,  and  ^  Is  evident  his  sympathies  are  on  the 
#de  of  justice,  humanity,  and  progress." 

LONDON  SPECTATOR.— "We  cannot  express  our  opinion  of  Dr.  Curtius' 
took  better  than  by  saying  that  It  may  be  fitly  ranked  with  Theodor  Mommsen's 
yreat  work." 

N.  Y.  DAILY  TRIBUNE.-"A8  an  introduction  to  the  Btudyof  Grecian  history, 
ko  previous  work  la  comparable  to  the  present  for  vivacity  and  picturesque 
beauty,  while  In  sound  learning  and  accuracy  of  statement  it  la  not  Inferior  tt 
9m  elaborate  prodactlona  which  enrich  the  literature  of  the  age." 


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i!  iijii  il 


ii  l.l'l    I 


III:  '  ( 


''I   !    i;i(!;l.li 


